It's official. I really want to move. I practically need to move.

I need the mountains. I need a smaller town. I need a landscape to connect with.

For whatever reason, and I'm not defending it, Richmond doesn't do it for me. It lacks an ocean. It lacks a mountain. And the James River, well, it's just not my type. When I drive west of here and hit that first moment when you see the Blue Ridge rising up in front of you, my overwhelming feeling is, "Ahh, I am home!" It happens on Route 17 as you head through western Stafford and into Fauquier. It happens on Route 460 a bit past Lynchburg. It happens on Route 29 just north of Charlottesville. Even when I lived in some of these places, every time I would see that first real glimpse of the stacks of blue, one one top of another, my breath would catch.

I should be content where I am. I have friends here. I know the lay of the land, where things are, where to go. We have amenities. We have proximity to the kinds of places I dream of actually living--we're just about two hours from them wherever you head. And yet I still miss what I don't have.

This weekend, I drove up to Front Royal for a training session and it was honestly all I could do to turn the car around to take it home. I promise myself, solemnly, that I am going to get back to mountains some day.

Keva blocks are a constant favorite item in our house. Tonight, while I was reading _Heidi_ to the kids, Walter built "the wolf" above. This was just one of many fabulous representative and architectural wonders that I saw. Our reading has been slower than usual lately. Walter, Ollie, and I just finished reading _The Sacrifice_, a book about the Salem witch trials, and all four of us have been reading _Heidi_, a very slow book, and _Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing_. The boys and I also are working on _Carry On, Mr. Bowditch_, a book that didn't really take off with them when we started it a few weeks ago, but that I'd like to finish. Before that we read _Huckleberry Finn_ and _Misty of Chincoteague_. Next on my docket is _A Wizard of Earthsea_, which I'll admit is outside of my favored genres and outside those of my children. Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.


When I'm not reading, I really feel like the worst parent in the world.

I am seriously beginning to question my most basic parenting abilities. I was mentioning to someone this week that I still feel like I'm faking it. That I'm not really a mother of these people, but that I'm just someone bumbling her way through a role and not convincing anyone, least of all herself. "Legitimacy" is the word that came to my mind--I just don't feel legitimate. The deeper I get into trying to figure out if Walter has a growth issue of some kind, the more guilty I feel. I am a veritable cesspool of guilt. I feel like me, the mother-faker, have either zoned out so severely that I've starved my child into some nutritional stunting out of sheer inattention or divided attention or something like that OR that I've somehow failed to notice warning signs of something over the years.

Today we got back the results of his bone age hand and wrist scan that he had done yesterday, and it wasn't surprising that his "bone age" is considered significantly delayed. I have been reading around about what the possibilities are. Obviously one of them is a growth hormone deficiency. In this case, often the child has a face that looks young for his chronological age, but they tend to carry more weight and appear cherubic. Walter doesn't fit that particular morphographic or whatever you'd call it. Another option is what is referred to as "constitutional short stature," which would leave a child with a delayed bone age, but they will catch up to their expected adult height in a longer amount of time than the typical child. They tend to reach puberty later than their peers, and they tend to grow for a few years beyond the time their peers stop growing, but they eventually get there. They primarily need emotional support as they may be teased, self-conscious, or treated differently because they do not physically mature in the range of others their age. Then there seem to be a couple of conditions that we can rule out right away because some bloodwork has been done in the past few years or because he truly doesn't fit the profile at all. And then there's a very outer edge possibility that it's malnutrition.

I think I feel so guilty about his nutrition because I don't micromanage his intake. I know he doesn't always finish what's on his plate, and I haven't made a big fat hairy deal out of it. I don't always pay attention at lunchtime because we are often out and about and busy. He may not get a full and varied lunch with a variety of high calorie foods if I leave him to fend for himself in the kitchen. My others can be relied upon to make themselves a sandwich, microwave a corndog, or toast a bagel with cream cheese, but Walter currently can't eat those kinds of foods, at least not as easily as gluten-eaters do (gf bagels are really only a "bagel" because they are round and have a hole in the middle...). My calorie counts have been going fairly well--about 2000-3700 per day, depending on whether he encounters a calorie bonanza (did you know that a Cold Stone chocolate fudge shake, the small size, is 980 calories!). Still, I wonder, are there days when he hasn't had enough? And I feel awful that I've let him have some candy some days. I get lazy. A Snickers is something that we can buy when we're out somewhere that doesn't have much that is safe for him. It's not all that often, but there have been times, the type where the other kids might be eating doughnuts or cake at a party, when that's been the most readily available near-equivalent. I could just about kick myself to death for letting him have something with no nutritional value and all kinds of bad things. I am so very bad at bringing along fruit or even keeping a constant stock of GF bars, which tend to come in packs of 4 or 5, cost 4 or 5 dollars, and are gone in less than 4 or 5 bites. No sooner do we buy some of these than we have none left. Meanwhile, I can buy a pack of 48 or 64 chewy granola bars at Costco for less than $9. This same amount would be close to $60 in GF bars! I'm not stingy, and we must eat, but that's the cost of GF convenience!

At any rate, we will see an endocrinologist on Tuesday who will hopefully put our minds at rest. I am still waiting to get clapped right into prison for neglect. Benign neglect, but neglect.

We have lots of other things going on:

* camping this weekend--first Boy Scout outing

* I'm attending Director of Business Training in Northern Virginia for Classical Conversations

* We had to pay a *lot* of taxes this year, for the first time. Ouch.

* The aquarium remains. And note to self: prepare for oddity when you put something on Craigslist. I'm analyzing what the aquarium represents to me that I am holding on to. But I think the God's honest truth is that what I'm holding onto is something that no one has come to my house to take away.

* Frances started playing on a softball team this week. Didn't see that one coming. I should feel more terrible about not saying no, but she's having such a good time that it's hard to be too hard on myself.

* Tennis is in full swing, ha ha. I have a win and two losses so far. Kind of to be expected, since I'm still playing way above where I should be. I was proud of my 6-8 close lose yesterday, since I played fairly well and it was a good, competitive match.

* Kerry seems to not be going to India for six to nine months. Guilty, guilty, guilty. I feel so guilty about this. I have likely ruined his career. But I still feel like I would absolutely not have the support resources in place to handle something like this. I'd prefer to be a true single parent than to have this kind of upheaval. It highlights so much how I am in a severe friend deficit. I literally could not think of a single person I could even call to stay with my kids if I had to go to the E.R. in the middle of the night. It's hard to think of how they could pay him enough for that kind of a sacrifice.

* Swim and Dive team registrations this weekend. I think that Rutledge might be ready for swim team. He certainly would be adequate for most other clubs' swim teams, since he can swim a full lap without holding the lane lines. But our team might have higher standards. And it might require too much supervision to get him to practice. Still thinking about this one. We are already at the max family cost, so he would be free.

* Square foot garden is in and looking awesome. I could make myself a very sweet and small salad already. Of course I primarily have cold weather vegetables like lettuce. But lettuce is a wonderful thing. Frances wanted us to also plant a number of flowers, so we have a much more varied garden than I typically do. I wish I had planted some root vegetables, but it's probably too late. Nonetheless, I'm pleased with the new 4x8 bed that I built a few weeks ago, and the Mel's mix that I put in should last quite a while. I'm super excited about all the plans I have for the next few weeks. We also did a little bit of landscaping in the front, and I planted a bunch of bulbs, annuals, and cleared out the unkempt looking bed in front of our dining room where I lopped out two entire bushes last fall.

* I am reading a book about improving marriage that has given me mind-blowing insights. Things that should have been so obvious but that I had never had words for before. Now don't get me wrong--I haven't the faintest clue what I'm to do with this information or how I'm supposed to act upon it, or even whether it means that there is hope, but I will say that I felt a total identification with what these authors are saying, and that I understand a large source of my own frustration and about what is wrong about me and how I have contributed to and created the strain in my relationship. I try to avoid self-help books as much as possible, so I don't know if this is just how people always feel when they read a book on this type of topic ("Wow, they really nailed it!"), or if I was perhaps led to this particular book by some higher power. But it is giving me a big wad to chew on.

* I am newly committed to walking Bilbo and eventually running with him. I will train him. I will not fail at housebreaking.

* Finally, it appears that we will get new carpet. I'm so excited I could bust out of my skin. Or invite people over for a party. I have been so terribly embarrassed by our disgusting, worn out carpet upstairs (and on the stairs) that I cannot have anyone over. If this home improvement project ruins us financially, I will still feel that it is some of the best money we have spent. Every time I look at our carpet I feel like I am a wretched housekeeper, a boundary-less parent who has out of control children, and just generally a person with low standards. New carpet may not make all of life into a bowl of cherries, but it certainly will be a glorious change.

I get in these crazy, time-consuming predicaments all the time. This one is about tires. I have completely bald tires--slick at something you'd find at a racetrack. The tread is so worn that it's amazing the tires haven't popped (especially given my predilection for hitting potholes and knocking big pieces of my car off). So earlier this week, I went to the Costco tire center to buy new tires. They were all out of the kind I needed, since they're having a sale where you get $70 off a set of four. So I came back a few days later, and I thought everything was fine. I went in the store, bought myself a book and a frozen yogurt, and kicked back in the cafeteria to wait. About 45 minutes into my escapade, the tire guy came in and told me that my tire locks are preventing them from getting my tires off. I have no idea where the key is. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I threw away the key when I threw away lugnuts, since I was routinely sweeping these things around the garage in a flurry of leaves and cat litter that hopped the box. All I can say is that I really and truly don't have the key.

What is a person to do? I actually asked if was going to have to get a new car! No, I don't need a new car. But I do have to sit out at the Honda dealership with four kids for probably an hour or two in the morning. And then at Costco with four kids for an hour or more. I am not thrilled. Woo-hooo spring break!

This morning was my second tennis match of the suburban season. It was a hard one. I played one of my former reproductive endocrinologist's wives, so it was very interesting to talk with her afterwards. My partner and I lost 10-5, which was not too bad. Last week Michele and I won, which felt awesome after my very bad suburban fall. The trouble is that we are really playing beyond our ability level. Poor Michele, a 3.0, lost this morning to a 4.5. It wasn't a very good matchup! But I look forward to more wins if I'm able to play some doubles. I have been typed as a singles player for so long that I had forgotten the many joys of playing with another person. It's more fun (singles is primarily intense), it's more relaxing (someone else gets the ball part of the time!), and there's someone else to share the responsibility for winning or losing a point or game. I like it not all being about me, even as I selfishly enjoy the fame that comes with doing it myself.

We have some kind of interesting news in the past two days. Kerry was asked how he might feel about starting up an office in Blacksburg. I can answer how Nancy would feel. She would feel awesome. It's kind of like going to Colorado but not leaving Virginia. It would honestly be a dream come true. I was so giddy and busting with excitement yesterday that I thought I would burst. I think it's a long shot, and because I'm so very super happy, I doubt it will happen at all, but I have never felt such a sense of something being the right thing to do. There are so many reasons I want this to work out. I would be about 30 minutes from my Dad, and I'd like to spend more time with him and see him with more frequency but not need to spend the night when I go. I'd like for us to be able to do things together without my whole family being a burden. I miss the mountains. It sounds weird even to me to write something like that, but when I'm in the mountains, I feel like I am home. I never took for granted how very lucky I was to live in such a gorgeous place when I lived in Roanoke and Blacksburg and Charlottesville--I want to be where there are waterfalls and rocky streams and mountains to climb. I love being near the A.T. I have many special places--Pandapas Pond, the Cascades. I would love to live in a college town again, especially one where you can get around so easily on a bike or on foot. There seems to be a highly competitive dive team at Blacksburg High School, there is an excellent dance studio right in town, and I think we would easily find Boy Scouts, music instructors (maybe Tech students), and pretty much anything else we might be looking for with activities. I'd look forward to, well, doing less. I'd like to just start over and rebuild what we do from the ground up. I love the compactness of a town like that, and yet with the university there are so many things that come in--concerts, plays, performances, lectures. I would consider going back to school to study speech or occupational therapy. We could get a place with several acres and have chickens. I'm so sold on the prospect of moving that I'm thinking that I'd almost be willing to let Kerry stay home with the kids and I'd work retail or wait tables or whatever I had to do to make this a reality!

My Walter saga is still totally stressing me out, but he's doing the best he can eating. He is so petrified of the prospect of the feeding tube that he is complying with my force-feeding and food obsession. I have been meticulously tracking his food intake for five days now, and it's really quite encouraging. His intake has ranged from 2000 to about 3700 calories. He hasn't been doing much more than he typically does except for the milk, which adds quite a bit of calories. I also talked with a nutritionist to help me work on finding foods that are calorie-dense. Unfortunately, Walter and I both like calorie-less foods--things like fruits, vegetables, meats, water. I am optimistic that if our visit from CPS comes, my house may look messy, but we will still appear to have a most basic clue about nutrition and be able to demonstrate that we own and eat a balanced diet. Meanwhile, we have totally cleaned up on the gluten. No more McDonald's at all. No questionable foods outside the house. I hope that both of us will see more positive results.

Poor, poor Hokie is looking really bad lately. His weight loss continues, and he is terribly unhealthy looking. I am selfish because I am not ready to put him down. He was my baby before I had human babies. He was the most gorgeous beagle ever when he was younger. He was a brave explorer with tons of personality, even though it's hard to imagine that now. He had enormous energy, bold good looks, loved to play at the park with his doggie friends, was a tireless hiker, and was once a tiny, adorable puppy. Now he is a bag of bones, full of lumpy tumors, has trouble walking, and gets confused and will think a wall is a door or will have his lets fall out from under him. It breaks my heart. I am selfish. I want him to be with me forever. I want to make time go backwards and have him be who he once was. I want to have all the pictures I never took of him. I want to have an album of nothing but him and to tell the story of his life with us. I want to not look like an awful dog owner with an underfed dog. It is so hard to tell when it is time to let someone you love go. Is it when he can't walk at all? Is it when he finally dies on his own? Is it when he looks so bad that you know he will never get better? If he can still empty trashcans and rummage through the recycling and raid the cat litter box and pick a fight over food, does that mean he still has some quality of life? What I can say for sure is that my life has been better for knowing him and for getting to spend more than 16 years as one of his best friends.

I can't believe our spring break is almost over. These breaks make me realize how very, very lazy I really am. I want to do nothing. My lack of ambition really bothers Kerry, and on some very lost level, it bothers me as well. But the truth is, I'd love to spend a year just kind of coasting. Not working. Not helping out with a zillion things. Just taking care of my own family, having some time to read or watch TV or play board games or take walks, and getting my house in order so that I'm not always feeling like I can never have anyone over. We didn't do a lot this week, and that has been the best part of it.

Back on the Wall

Back on the Wall!

It felt awesome to be back climbing again. I hadn't been to Peak Experiences in a couple of months, so I was especially happy to be able to join some of my homeschooling parent friends and spend a couple of hours climbing. I thought I might have even forgotten how to tie my knots and thread my belay device, but it all came back very quickly. Some nights climbing are kind of so-so--I don't make it up everything, I don't make it up much of anything. But tonight, I started out with a confidence building 5.6, did a few more like that, did two 5.7s, and then finished with a really fun 5.8. What I love about Peak is the way that they make the routes special and with interesting features or skills required. One had a very cool corner to use and climb over. Another went around a corner and then across and back again. One had a very welcome smiley face hold at the very top. What's interesting is that the one I think I struggled most with was a 5.6, though it was a competition route, and we determined that these felt more difficult than their non-comp counterparts. What a nice time and a great group of women!

It was altogether a good, if unproductive day. I spent way too much at Costco, which isn't surprising since it would be a miracle to spend under $100. I was well beyond that, unfortunately. I failed to purchase the paint I need to finish my stairwell and kitchen project. I'm just not sure about the color, and at $47 a gallon, it feels like a commitment. I hate commitment! I priced tires, which I should plan to get tomorrow, since my front tires look like they're ready for the Indy 500 they're so slick and lacking tread. I busted up the front of my car two weeks ago when I hit a big pothole outside Latin Ballet, and when we had the Honda dealership price new tires while we were having my bumper and some giant plastic piece that goes around the wheelwell worked on or replaced, the estimate was staggering. I feel pretty good about the Costco price, it's just a matter of finding the time to sit there.



Rutledge had a swim lesson today. The big question is whether he will be ready to be on swim team this year. Our swim club has something called Tropical Storm, which is a development team for the swim team, but last year, the inaugural year, went really poorly. There were kids on this "team" who were afraid to even get into the water and who had to be carried by an instructor through every session. Most were clinging to lane lines for most of the season. Rutledge is able to meet the basic requirement and swim a length of the pool. I wouldn't exactly call it freestyle--he has a lot of trouble multi-tasking and using "big arms" while kicking--he can do one or the other. But he is able to do one or two laps at a time, and he can swim on his back, though one would be hard pressed to call it backstroke. Shannon, his favorite lifeguard and pool buddy, is working with him. He kind of has two weeks to get it together. I'm not sure it makes sense for him on be on the team anyway, since he would likely need to be supervised while at the practices, and I'm not sure I want to do that. His practicing would also kind of interfere with my tennis, which is annoying. But I guess I'll see what happens. It costs about $125 less for him to be on swim team than to be on the development team, so the decision is really between the real swim team or nothing. One thing I can say...he just loves to swim! We have been at the pool about 5 days a week for the past couple of weeks.

Ollie kind of has a girlfriend but doesn't know it. He now always goes early to dive practice so that he can practice with Alyssa, who is on the year-round clinic team with him. They are at fairly similar levels, so they can bring out the best in each other. Ollie is really getting older. Today he spent much of the afternoon bagging leaves with John, who lives next door. Then he went out to dinner with their family. I can tell that the days when he is going to do things with us are numbered. He really seems to have had a big maturity and attitude leap lately, and I suppose it's true that they don't stay little forever.

Frances worked on watering the garden, which is now almost completely done, preparing a space for the flower we need to plant, and coloring Easter eggs, since we forgot and had nothing but brown eggs until today. Her eggs have googly eyes and feathers for hair, which is sort of interesting when you open the refrigerator and see them all sitting there in an egg caddy.

Poor Walter can't seem to get a break. Today he has had a sore throat, and by tonight he had a small fever. This has affected the force-feeding thing. I hope I'm not really force-feeding him, but he is absolutely petrified by the idea of a feeding tube. I've been researching the options, and it's just all rather scary. Scary most of all because I'm not sure how I ended up with a child with a major medical problem. I have been reading a book called, "Confessions of a Mother Inferior" lately, and the primary message of it is that we are given our particular children, they were specially chosen for us, and so when we are feeling inadequate and wondering what to do, we can take heart that God selected us as the parents for a reason. Funny, because I often wonder whether some higher power is telling me to put my children in foster care so that they have a higher chance of making it to adulthood with a modicum of health and sanity. But I have been trying to meditate on this idea that we don't have the children we have by accident. At any rate, he still managed to eat 3580 calories before dinnertime tonight. I won't mention where some of them came from--and when I say some, I mean like half. I have been trying to understand how people can overeat and have too many calories when so many of the foods that we tend to eat seem so paltry in the calorie department. The answer, I'm convinced, must be that people eat many, many servings of some of these things, and they must eat things that are on the naughty list. While nuts, a calorie bonanza, are perhaps only on a questionable list for some people, I'd say that Cheetos and those delectable Kettle chips are probably not something we're really supposed to be having 5 servings of. I've determined that one way to boost calories is to do the opposite of what weight management websites tell you to do. So one key, I think, is to have food in front of the TV or computer. I hadn't given it much thought; I eat wherever I am most of the time, but I'm thinking I might encourage blind snacking in front of a screen. I also made an "underweight people" counter today--this contains a lineup of about 8 bags of things that people who need to eat more can eat without having to think. There are at least four kinds of trail mix. Nuts and nut clusters. Dried fruits. Trans-fat free chips. So guess what happened when I went out climbing tonight right after Kerry came home and before a family dinner? They didn't eat dinner! Well, Frances had a big dinner, but she never neglects to eat. We have no problems there. Ollie went to Johnny Rockets with a friend and ate an obscenely large brownie and three refills of fries and a giant burger. And Walter ate nothing but pistachios. Sigh. I suppose he gets a pass because he's sick. But it makes me hesitate to go out gain!

We got a last estimate on carpeting, and I think we have our source. I can't wait. I truly feel like it will be a new lease on life when it happens. I can scarcely believe it might be around the corner. Our carpeting upstairs is so gross that I don't even want to invite close friends over any more. The spots, the areas where it is down to bare backing, the glow in the dark silly putty, now black with dirt, . Eww. I started trying to move the furniture, but I'm going to have to wimp out here. I'm going to have to pay someone to do it. I hate not doing things ourselves, but there's just no way for me to do it alone. I wonder if I will stop wanting to move if we get carpet that makes things feel clean and sanitary.

Today's final dilemma is my "blocked" bank card. It's kind of unbelievable, but I've been without a bank card now for about 10 weeks. This is my 4th card, and the bank still can't figure out why it says it is activated, why they send me a pin over and over (now with a totally different card and different pin), but it is consistently declined. I went in person and had it dealt with, everything looked good. And then I tried using it in a store and it was rejected yet again. It's getting kind of embarrassing, even though I know that it's not because we have no funds. I'm ready to find a new bank.



Here's my Hokie. He may be 17 pounds and on his last legs, but he's still a beagle through and through. He will enter an entire empty bag of dog food if it means that he can get one more morsel. He still dumps trash cans, shreds peed-in Pull-Ups, and decimates my recycling. He picks fights, defends his food, and steals things out of children's hands. I think this means he has a little bit more life left!

Happy Easter!

We had a very good Easter. Our tradition is to go to our church's Easter Celebration, which is always the day before Easter. This year I was in charge of the crafts (not the first time), so I got to kick back in the picnic shelter, my work was very simple since all of the craft items were laid out for me, and I had workers at every time slot to help the kids who came. In my tent we were making butterflies with chenille stem antennae and various sticker pictures. Surprisingly, Walter spent about 40 minutes there coloring minute detail on his butterly, who he planned to make "so colorful that it will make your eyes hurt." I've never seen him engage this way in a craft project, so it was kind of fascinating.



This year felt a bit like a rite of passage. Walter and Ollie were too old for the egg hunt (this is a hazard of embracing your inner 6th grader instead of going with your red shirt age). Rutledge is still in the preschool egg hunt, and he found a lot of eggs, including two of the coveted golden ones that won a prize. I was so proud of him and Ollie, who was helping him. They gave one of his golden eggs to another little girl who was visiting the church and who was very shy and had not picked up any eggs on her own. She and her mother were so excited that she got a prize and a gold egg to take home!




The other highlights of this particular outing are the pony rides and the farm animal petting zoo. There was the most adorable 2 week old goat, there with his mother, and then two month old twin goats with their mother. It's always heartwarming to see animals nursing, and they were simply adorable.


There was also a donkey, a sheep and her baby, a duck, a bunny, and a very, very wooly black sheep. The baby goat would occasionally wander away and would need to be picked up; we kept hoping he was going to be naughty while we were there to retrieve him!

The other highlight is the moonbounce, next to a cotton candy machine, next to a popcorn machine. Altogether, we had quite a fine time. We also ran into many friends we hadn't seen for a while, so that made it even more fun.

This morning, Kerry played guitar in the band. These mornings can be challenging for the rest of us because we have to not only get up early, but get dressed and fed and out the door at an hour when normally more than half of us are still hiding under the covers. I was going to say that I feel like we are always late, but I need to amend that to say...we ARE always late. But it was worth the difficulty this morning because Rutledge was looking especially dapper today. He looked like such a Rutledge!



The other big tradition at Easter is the breakfast potluck after the early service. This particular type of potluck is a great friend for the gluten intolerant, since eggs, sausage, cheese, and fruit tend to dominate the offerings. It's easy to pass up the doughnuts and pastries when there are all sorts of casseroles and other good things to choose from. It's also nice to have a more extended social time, since we're often passing people on our way to or from somewhere; this was a time when people who go to the early service and the late service can see each other for more than a few seconds.


Frances just can't look natural in a picture to save her life. But some of her weird smile might be attributed to losing two teeth in two days. What's more, she had the loosest teeth I've ever seen without having them, well, lost. I can't even begin to understand how anyone can resist the urge to wiggle and twist a tooth that is hanging by less than a thread, but Frances did this for nearly two weeks. I was not even allowed to breathe a word about her loose teeth to anyone, since she was sure that no one else could resist tackling her and forcing the things out, if only to free themselves from the grossness of it all. Tonight she lost a tooth at the pool--quickly becoming a tradition site for tooth loss. My children have lost at least five teeth at the pool; I have no idea what that's all about.

I'm watching the show "Life," a documentary in the vein of The Trials of Life from back in the 90s and Earth, from a few years ago and the Planet Earth series. Tonight is about marine invertebrates, something I know a bit too much about. For those not in the know, we have our aquarium up for sale. So far we have one flaky guy who can't find our house and always wants to come after 9 p.m. Needless to say, we haven't met up with him yet. Then we had someone offer to trade us an XBox 360 for the thing (we said "No!"). And a lowball offer from someone who hasn't seen it. We're willing to let it go really cheap, but since we've spent probably somewhere close to $2500 or more, it would be nice to get a little something. Our asking price barely covers the cost of the still-alive things in it, not the actual physical structure itself.

Kerry finally came over to my camp--the one that says that this is just a thing, not my soul, not my identity. The thing overflowed and swelled the wood floor around it for the very last time. Last week we had an incident where not only was water flying everywhere (when we say bring towels when this happens, we're not talking two towels--we're talking 14!), but we couldn't get the thing off. Walter was send behind to unplug the thing because it's hard to reach, and he started shrieking, "The outlet is shooting out sparks and is smoking!" What followed was a breathless five minutes of turning off every possible circuit breaker before finding the right one. And I had told my friend Maureen that we were finally at a stable place with this thing, and less than 48 hours later, my yellow tang was about 1/4" from the bottom of the tank, looking at his reflection in a corner (never a good sign...), and 24 hours after that he was not only dead, but completely missing. I would call it unbelievable, but we have had such a mystery with the "Bermuda Triangle" in this and our other tank that nothing shocks me these days. How a two inch nearly-square fish can vanish into nothingness is beyond me. Obviously we have some efficient clean-up crew members. I'm done. Done fantasizing about rare fish. Done with snarky inverts. Done with mean fish. Done with Local Fish Stores. Done with needing a $190 UV sterilizer. Done with professional cleanings and a half dozen supplements and with salt and fresh water getting out of balance and shooting out salty air. Unfortunately, the thing is still sitting there. And it looks darn pretty, especially when you hate it and aren't thinking about whether you should introduce another $70 fish that's going to die in three weeks (to be fair, we had this last fish that died for a whole five weeks!). There's no pressure now. The glow of it is so enticing and soothing that I have to constantly tell myself we're doing the right thing. I'd love to take a trip to England or South America. Or send the boys to Boy Scout camp. We can't afford these things. Last week we paid for nearly an entire week of camp...to the fish guy and the new pump. My fish could all have had a European vacation with what I've paid to keep them alive!

I am so ready for a long break. We have been living at the pool all week. Tonight, hearing that the water was a balmy 87 degrees, I broke down and went in myself. And swam laps. I did 34 laps, which is about half a mile. It felt really good, but I was so pathetic. I really don't have any idea how to breathe, so I'm sure I was terribly inefficient. I also was very slow and cheated on six of the early laps by using a kickboard. But you have to start somewhere. I have never been taught to swim freestyle or any other stroke--the only swim lessons I've ever had were the basic Red Cross "How Not to Drown" ones. We also never belonged to a pool when I was growing up, so the only times I got to swim were when we visited my grandparents in Florida or Myrtle Beach and when I went to summer camp or those swim lessons I mentioned. I can definitely get around, but I have no sense of how to be efficient or to move my arms or gasp for air. I can't say that I'm really going to make swimming laps a regular thing. After all, I'm notorious for starting to exercise and then dropping it abruptly. I'm still trying to get to regular yoga classes (okay, even one this year would be good; haven't been to any in 2010!). I'm still trying to run, even though I'm not consistent. I'm congratulating myself for walking the dog twice a day now, so that feels like something. But I would love to push myself to swim laps and to get faster. I would like to swim laps with Kerry and the kids. I would like to see my name up on the wall because I went 25 miles and won a swim cap.

And last but not least, today I finished up my raised bed garden. It's a 4x8 square foot garden, and Frances put in all of my square foot dividers. It looks awesome. I think it is placed where it will get a few hours of sun a day, and sun is my largest challenge because we have so many trees. Just because it's sunny now doesn't mean it won't be shady in a month when all the leaves are there, but I think this is a pretty safe spot. I have one 4x4 square already fully planted, but this will give me 32 squares, which feels positively indulgent. My Mel's Mix is complete (three trips out for compost, since mine isn't ready yet). I now have kale, three kinds of lettuce, broccoli, cabbage, radishes, spinach, and marigolds in. I have various herbs and flowers waiting to find their spot tomorrow. In the front yard, I planted a bunch of bulbs and transplanted some liriope. Tomorrow's plan is to get the rest of the things in and to set up a spot for flowers, since this is what Frances most wants. This is really her garden, since she has done most of the planning and has helped with every aspect of it.

It's been a hard weekend. I took Frances in to see the doctor because I felt like her allergy management needs to be changed a bit. She was looking washed-out last week, with dark under her eyes and just that "allergy look." It's not surprising, since it's really quite challenging out there now with yellow pollen brazenly settling on the cars and mold counts very high with all the rain we've been having. Plus we are suddenly spending infinitely longer amounts of time outside than we were, say, three weeks ago. I've been having a hard time with occasional headaches, post-nasal drip (I can see slime in the back of my throat when I look in with a flashlight), and stuff catching in my throat when I talk or read aloud for a long time. Rutledge also needed another vaccine, since I've been slow vaccinating him and try to prioritize the ones that I feel are more important without overloading his system at any one given time.

So I asked about Walter at the end of the appointment. He's looking skinnier again, and I asked if I should be worried. My pediatrician absolutely jumped down my throat in a personal way, accusing me of canceling appointments with specialists (not true--we went, we followed up with 2 of the 3 suggested tests, we were told his issues are more than likely "constitutional," we were not told to follow up), and threatening to put in a feeding tube. She repeatedly and pointedly kept saying, "Prove to me he is getting enough calories." The implication is that I'm not feeding him and he is getting inadequate nutrition. I can't prove it--I truly haven't kept a food diary. She kept asking if I've kept a food diary. Well, no one has ever asked me to do it before. Honestly. And I can't "prove" that he's getting a certain number of calories (I had to press her to get her to tell me what a target number would be). I felt confident that I was not starving him, that even with all the vegetables and fresh fruits I've been pushing lately and with him saying he's full, that he's getting enough calories. She suggested his metabolism was probably unnaturally low because of his low caloric intake, and that this was then creating a cycle where he wasn't hungry because he wasn't consuming enough calories to create an adequate metabolism. My understanding of human metabolism is that being overweight and less active creates a lower metabolism. But whatever. She threatened me and him with a feeding tube if he doesn't get enough calories (though she didn't ask for me to actually come in to prove it...). Poor kid is terrified! I feel awful because I was the one who came and asked a question about a child who wasn't even in there. When she saw him when he came back from walking the dog, she said he didn't look too bad. As a person who has struggled to gain weight myself, the prospect of a feeding tube would scare the bejesus out of me, too, because I eat as much as I possibly can, even if it's not always adequate.

I am now concerned that she will call Child Protective Services, and I am prepared. I came home that evening and even without changing a single thing in our house, I believe that anyone who came to inspect our cabinets, refrigerator, pantry, and freezer would be amply satisfied with the variety and healthiness of food in our house. We have multiple types of bread, milk, cheese, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen fruits and vegetables, two hundred pounds of grass-fed, local, organic beef, about eight pounds of chicken, nuts, legumes, pastas of all types (whole wheat, semolina, white rice, brown rice, quinoa), and more types of flours than any gluten-eating family would ever have--whole wheat, corn, tapioca, white rice, brown rice, buckwheat, unbleached white, quinoa, fava, garfava, potato, and on and on. We have semi-local syrup, local honey, vitamins, omega-3 supplements. And prior to this whole Easter thing, very little "junk food," although to be fair, that's partly because we had eaten what I last got at the store.

I am very, very guilty of letting Walter and I eat some candy. My pediatrician kept suggesting that it was the lack of Big Macs and fast food that was making Walter underweight and malnourished. There's a severe breach of logic in this, but even so...it's not even true. No, he doesn't eat Big Macs--they're not on his diet. But he had been eating plenty of McDonald's fries--at least 1200 calories worth a week. He does eat grilled chicken from there. I'm not a crunchy purist. I'm not sure if she was tagging me as a tofu and kale eating vegan who has some exotic and restrictive diet, but she surely is wrong. I'm probably the most dietarily "moderate" person out there--I like my meats to be organic and local, I like my vegetables to be non-genetically modified and organic, I like to know who I get my eggs from, I go out of my way to use the more nutritionally dense GF flours, which probably gives more variety to my baked goods than to the average wheat-eater's. I read labels. But I don't mind Snickers bars if they fill us up for a little bit until we get to other food (we can't eat a cookie someone offers us, a cupcake, crackers, or other snack foods you commonly encounter when you're out). I know fast food is bad for us, but it doesn't stop me from taking advantage of its convenience more frequently than I'd like to admit.

So I am still preparing for a visit from the County, and I hope and pray they will be pleased with what they see. A house full of books, a completed math book, test scores above the 90th percentile, craft supplies and musical instruments and obvious signs of education happening. Children who can identify the location of every country in the world and most of their capitals. And food that exceeds WIC standards by a long shot.

I also began keeping that exhaustive food diary. I'm the skinny girl that everyone loves to hate, and I truly hate myself for being thin. If I could rub a magic lamp and get three wishes, one of the wishes I'd have would be for me to look physically more like other people and to even have to watch what I eat not because it's going to land me in GI distress, but because it might affect my weight. I'd trade my GI issues for just about anything! And I'd like to not be "hated" for my "lucky" genetics. I certainly didn't choose it! It is true that I can eat just about anything, and I know that my day is likely coming very soon when this won't be the case, just as it did for my mother and grandmother. But for now, I don't know a lot about calories, only as much as I've had to learn in order to attempt to eat 4000 calories a day while pregnant with the twins (super-hard!) and to help my underweight children. I know about adding cheese and butter and heavy cream to anything that will take it. The standard medical advice for underweight people is to drink a lot of milkshakes. We are no strangers to ice cream!

And here's what I learned from my diary: Walter is not starving to death from lack of calories or food variety. I have tried not to actively push radically different foods from our normal ones, and on the first day he had around 2000 calories, and yesterday he had 3465. Today he had already had 1478 by 2:30. I'm still not sure how many calories an underweight 11 year old boy of slight frame should be eating, but these are probably in the ballpark. I did get him Homestead Creamery chocolate Creamline milk, which is what he drinks if he drinks milk. We don't have it all the time. I don't force it on him the way my mother forced me to drink it twice a day every day of my lactose-less-tolerant childhood (I'm just now able to drink milk without a lot of distress and bloating and without Lactaid after healing some with the gf diet). But if the number of glass bottles rattling around my car waiting to be returned for my deposit is any indication of what we've been drinking the last two months, I would say that again, I'm not starving anyone.

So this leaves the mystery, but I think I have a theory. It is not true that a celiac can eat anything at McDonald's except the buns. First of all, the "eat a bunless Big Mac" thing is clearly said by someone who has never tried to eat a bunless fast food burger! Second, most everything except the condiments and drinks at McDonald's contains gluten. The "special sauce," the french fries, the grilled chicken. Things that you don't even know how they got gluten in them in the first place (the fries are in a beef base that contains gluten). What opened my eyes in my hurt (I was stunned and greatly saddened to think that I was starving a child I love very much) was looking for backup for my gut response. And though I had kind of heard that the french fries are now unsafe (they once were considered gf), I didn't want to believe it. But we have been eating a lot of them. And we had been eating the grilled chicken salad. It could just be possible that if Walter has an absorption problem when he eats gluten that I've been contributing to that situation. It's not underfeeding him. It's not inadequately monitoring his food intake. It's feeding him the wrong things with the best of intentions in trying to make him bigger.

I am going to continue to keep a food diary for the next week. I want to see variety over the course of days. I want to see what he gravitates to on his own. I am no authority on healthy eating because I am not overweight myself and have always had trouble with three larger meals a day. I absolutely cannot finish most restaurant meals. I have difficulty with hypoglycemia and tend to eat frequently to keep my blood sugar even. If I go too long, I have trouble eating because I'm over-hungry and than I get full too quickly. As a result of this little episode in our family life, I'm coming to terms with the idea that I most likely am anorexic. I've never thought of myself that way. I've never restricted food except to protect myself from feeling sick. One of the things that I'm hoping to address with the counselor I'm seeing is my unhealthy relationship with food. I grew up in a family where food was not adventurous, where my Dad got physically ill if he had much beyond his very basic 10 or so meals. My Mom cooked a lot of things from boxes and wasn't exposed to much ethnic cooking and had grown up with very basic foods--pork chops, fried chicken, steaks, salisbury steak, pasta with a meat sauce. I'm now seeing how this has affect me and my attitude toward food. It also probably made me the small person I am today who has some kind of metabolic problem with food. And my attitude toward food isn't as adventurous as it could be, and I tend to be an eat-to-live rather than a live-to-eat person. I wish I was the latter. I deeply desire to be a good food model for my kids, and when they see me thin or feeling sick after I eat, it is not modeling the food-is-to-love-and-brings-people-together that they need to be seeing as they get closer to going out on their own.

At any rate, I was relieved to see that my instinct that I'm not starving or providing inadequate calories was correct. I have had a hard time trusting my instincts lately because I have some pretty weird ideas about a lot of things. But my accounting has been in accordance with my perception. Walter, on a typical day, will eat such calorie bonanzas as mixed nuts, pistachios, cheese, and bacon. The only milk he drinks is calorie-charged (not necessarily a "good" thing, since I'm sure all the chocolate and whole fat isn't a "good" in many people's book). He does eat candy, and that's naughty of me. But for an underweight person trying to add in a few extra calories in a day of baby carrots, grapes, apples, bananas, spinach, and lettuce, this doesn't seem off the charts awful.

Here's today, a holiday, so much worse than usual. Still, not horrific in the grand realm of child-feeding! As my friend Christi said this morning, this is one of two days a year when she lets her children eat candy for breakfast:

* Easter candy (150)
* 1 cup strawberries, 1/2 cup grapes, tangerine (100)
* Chocolate milk, Homestead Creamery (220)
* Orange juice (55)
* Sausage quiche, no crust (250)
* 2 deviled eggs (128)
* Easter candy again (180)
* Tangerine (25)
* 13 bean chili with beef (450)
* mixed nuts (200)

Dinner will be T-bone steaks, asparagus, rice, and baked beans. Not sure of calorie count on that.

I have a bad feeling I'm lowballing his candy intake for today. I'll be honest--I'm in the camp of let-them-eat-a-lot today when it comes to things like Easter and Halloween so that it gets gone and there aren't weeks of candy-filled days and monitoring.

So I'm prepared. I'm prepared for jail, having my children removed from me, or a fight. Whatever comes, I feel that I'm doing my best. I was given this particular child for some reason, and though I often feel ill-equipped to be the best parent to him, I'm trying to figure out what is right, what is the root cause. I want him to be on track to reach puberty and become an adult. It's disconcerting to have a child who is so obviously smaller than his same-age or even younger-age peers. And he feels the difference, too. I'm willing to change to help him.

What I picked up that I didn't intend to:

If you want to lose weight, eat fruit. Lots of it. Like strawberries. You can eat strawberries all day and it won't add up to anything significant. Grapes, too. Tangerines. 25 calories! And steak. I never knew that meat had way fewer calories than it seems like it should. That's Walter's favorite food, and here I had been thinking that it had substance. It's just a pile of protein. Actually, I hate to admit this for fear of being clobbered, but it seems like if you just avoid cheese (even cheese sticks seem like they should be far more calories than they are!) and nuts and whole chocolate milk and certain candy that isn't all that filling but adds up quickly (Snickers isn't in this category--it's not a crazy number of calories, and as they say, it's satisfying so I don't find myself wanting to eat three of them...), it seems like the calories just don't add up to all that much. I know when I was pregnant with the twins it was absolutely oppressive to aim at 4,000 calories a day (and 100-120 grams of protein). I had to carefully pick every single thing I ate to even try for that, and it meant always having to choose the "calorie bonanza" like a really huge hamburger with lots of sauce or something from McDonald's (which I totally couldn't stomach) at every single meal. Even eggs aren't that calorie-dense. Seems like deviled eggs ought to be really bad for you, but they really need to be put in a context of a bunch of other things--like a big portion of a breakfast casserole or three tablespoons of maple syrup and a whole stack of pancakes--to push into the big zone. So the past few days have been eye-opening. No wonder I've had food issues all my life!

Some days everything just seems to fall into place and you believe there is someone watching out for you. My big Classical Conversations childcare dilemma seems to have come to what looks like not just resolution, but something even better. If it works out, it could be a win-win for everyone. I would be able to relax and do the directing and tutoring I'd need to do, all of my kids would not just be supervised, but would have someone who could help them work their schoolwork and memory work. I get to do something professional that I'd like to do, they get another person's input in their life. I can scarcely believe it might be possible.

Then, and I feel funny talking about it, I hit a major find at Goodwill. There was a Trek 820, a much, much newer model than my old 820, with shocks, very, very little rust, and other than two flat tires, seemingly working parts. It's just the size for Ollie or for me. And I found the elusive desk. Kerry says that it is amazingly ugly, but I think it's just right for the job. It's big enough, but not too big. It has space for the CPU to keep it off the floor, a shelf for the printer (though I will admit, the placement of it may not be optimal for how often I have to photocopy), and it's really not that ugly--it's kind of a natural color, and yes, it's fake wood, but that's okay. It doesn't require a ton of real estate in my tight library/office/sitting area.

Then I bit the bullet and did something that I have been wanting to do since I changed the room in the first place--I moved all of the hate-to-be-moved bookshelves back along one wall. No, it doesn't optimize the furniture placement options for that room, but it just looks better than it did before, and my previous incarnation of that room blocked the french doors that go into the family room. As soon as even one bookcase was moved, I felt my heart all aflutter simply from seeing the blue glow of the TV in the family room peeking through. Not that's it's about the TV--it's really about having sunlight coming from the front windows and heading back into a room with no windows straight to the outside. But I feel a breath of fresh air. Okay, so the room is a total disaster now, and I don't know where I'm putting one small Ikea bookcase and a giant Ikea cube thingy with 16 cubicals, and there's the ugly hutch thing with no doors on the top where we keep our art supplies. But I can send at least one of those things up to Rutledge's room, which also needs an overhaul. That's a job for another blast of energy and another day.

This morning we put together our 4x8 planter box which will house my square foot garden. I had one of my raised beds collapse and kind of disappear (I think two sides are nailed to a tree as a ladder up the trunk...), but my other square foot garden is already planted and I'm excited about the season. I plan to finish putting in my "Mel's Mix" tomorrow morning, and then I can put in a few seeds I have and prepare for my spring/summer vegetables. I'm putting it in a new spot and hoping that I will perhaps get a little sunlight. Our back yard is so very full of trees and shade that it is hard to find more than two hours of sunlight anywhere. This is my last big attempt. My box is cedar, and it looks awesome, and I'm proud of us for having it done in 15 minutes.

Then we went to a friend's house to make mason bee houses, which are basically pieces of wood with 3-4" holes drilled into them to make a hospitable housing zone for these stingerless bees. I plan to put one near each of our raised beds, and hopefully the happy pollinators will show up and keep things reproducing. It was a very fun afternoon, and I hope to spend more time with these new friends because they seem very relaxed and fun. The kids enjoyed jumping on the trampoline, painting people's nails, and catching up with some friends we haven't seen much lately much more than they did making bee homes, but Ollie did a pretty nice job of handling the drill on his own and making his own home.

Unfortunately, I still managed to run myself silly today. Floor estimate made me late for preschool. Back for pickup, figure out a quick lunch, go to bee home making, then to Goodwill, then to ballet, then home for about an hour, then back to pick up Frances and take Rutledge to his dance class, then rush to swim lesson, then rush home for a Go-To-Meeting. At 9:15, the day finally felt like it was mine, and of course I was starving (missed 2 meals in this runaround!), needed to tidy up, needed to check regular email, and the kids wanted to be read to. I'm reading "Carry on, Mr. Bowditch" with the older ones. And I wonder if we'll ever finish "Misty of Chincoteague" with all three. I can't wait for spring break to slow things down!

My painting projects are still very unfinished, which is also making me crazy. The turquoise family room is pretty much a done deal, but I need to get up the outlet covers. And sand one area and repair the drywall, which I'd prefer to have someone professional do because I suck at drywall and this is a very, very prominent location that everyone sees and where imperfections are going to be obvious (of course anything is better than giant holes in the wall and silver corner bead sticking out with globs of plaster in other places. I still maintain that it looks a combination of awesome and weird. With maybe the weird winning out. The "divine white" zone is just plain not done. And it's undone in an ADD kind of way, too--streaks here and there, random rolled zones, some area with paint on every wall, but not a single one completed. So that is a weekend goal. I can't even afford the paint at this point, since I've spent so much on other projects. But again, anything is better than walls with huge greasy stains everywhere, and anything is better than drawings and scribbles.

The good news is, it's spring, it's Easter, and hopefully less will be asked of us in the coming week and we can concentrate on having fun and on getting things in order. That's what spring is all about, right?