My garden is gorgeous. In fact, my lettuces are ready for harvest and taste scrumptious. However, I have a confession to make. I AM the biggest loser. Excited by my lovely bounty and the tender crispness of the salad blend up front, I bought Kerry a few leaves and forced him to eat them. The next thing I knew, he was vigorously spitting them into the sink! I was offended! He said it was "dry." Hmm?

So I went out to get a few leaves for myself, and soon I found myself spitting into the kitchen sink.

When I went to the garden and picked up the marker, what did I find but "Petunia!"

Now he is so angry and terrified that he is going to die of petunia poisoning that he is not speaking to me. Now he is sick. I'm afraid. And it's all my fault.

Which is kind of a shame because this is the first time we have been home with no children (they are watching a movie with a neighbor) in probably, well, ever.

I have researched the toxicity of petunias, and the flowers are not toxic. What's less clear is whether the leaves are; no one touches this subject to my satisfaction. They do seem to be okay for turtles and deer and dogs and cats, but I don't know much about people. Plus I noticed that the pictures of petunias didn't look at all like my leaves. My leaves looked like crinkle-edged lettuce, and online petunia leaves are small teardrops. I fear that I have no idea what I ate! But it is sticking in my throat and still feels like it is there.

Who said gardening is for wimps?

And who has been moving my garden markers?!

Anyone who has seen me in the past three weeks has the same question. "What were you painting?"

I can't seem to paint the walls without painting myself, too. But the answer to the question is, "I'm painting my family room." And I'm painting it turquoise. The tank is dirty in the front (overflows of salt water leave behind a lot of salt!), but you're really supposed to be looking at the amazing color behind it.

I also painted my stairwell, upstairs hallway, and the area below the chair rail and breakfast counter in my kitchen, as well as the super-high wall where I can't reach the top angle.



Nobody in my house sleeps alone. And who can resist a guy in candy striped jammies?


I hope that my prominent memory of these years will be how there were always lots of extra people in my bed. This is what every morning is like--everyone makes their way to my room and we all watch Spongebob or Toot and Puddle together. Now it's still kind of true that some of these cuddlers in my bed are still doing things like lying there, lazily peeing in a pull-up instead of hauling their little butts out of bed and going to the bathroom. But this is still may favorite moment of each day, and we are fortunate to have the luxury of time to wake up slowly before heading out into the busyness of the rest of the day.

I just cannot finish one of these entries lately to save my life! I sit down to write, and the next thing I know I'm distracted and never return, and when I do, my whole Firefox session is over and I don't think about blogging, and the cycle continues.

There are so many things going on, both good and bad.

The bad: hanging out today with a friend, and Frances comes to me with a half gallon of ice cream and tells me that it is a liquid. Suddenly, the information I forgot from earlier-- the ice and water dispenser were not functioning when I went to fill Rutledge's school water bottle, after we spent about $350 in December getting them fixed--had a bearing on the ice cream situation. A major reason that the ice and water cease to work is that the temperature gets too high. So we threw away a lot of food, and really, we should throw away more. I'm willing to pay a pretty high price not to get food poisoning. We made the best of it--made a huge amount of baked chicken with the stuff thawing in the freezer, reacquainted ourselves with the blackeyed peas that were frozen, are finally going to eat the chili we had canned and that now needs to be consumed ASAP. Still, to pay several hundred more for a new computer for the fridge really wasn't something we needed to do when we just put down a 50% deposit on the carpeting that is supposed to go in three weeks from now. The fridge problem was the computer board that governs the cooling system and its readouts. Who knows why it spontaneously decides to go on the fritz, but I estimate the unit could have been failing to cool from sometime during last night or during the night to 3:15 when I discovered the problem.

The other bad news is that Walter may have some deficiency disease. Like rickets or a vitamin D deficiency. I feel just terrible, like I should have put more effort into feeding and supplementing. We all know the ruckus about breastfed babies and vitamin D these days, and Walter was lucky enough to be breastfed for about 27 months. He has always spent a lot of time outside...probably more than some of my other children, and definitely more than the average child who is in school all day. And I'm not a big user of sunscreen, I blush (burn?) a bit to admit. I definitely have never used it in any season other than summer, and I have been guilty of not using enough of it and having my children get tan. And, ironically, I do give him a specific calcium and vitamin D supplement, but apparently not enough (I just follow package labeling, but I now know that there really isn't believed to be a toxic level that is easily reached). What I don't do is give him a lot of milk. Milk is something that we use in fits, rather than on a daily basis every single day of the year. This is my fault. During my entire childhood, I was forced to drink a small glass of milk every morning and every evening, probably only about 6 ounces each time, and I'm fascinated by Walter having an issue like I did with the last half inch or so of milk in a glass--it just tastes yucky for some reason. For me, the forced milk was difficult. I thought it tasted bad, no matter how it was presented (chocolate, etc., though most of the time it was just white) and no matter how local and high quality the milk (we had it delivered to a little insulated metal milk box on our porch by Yoder Dairies, a super company that left the business in 2008). And worse yet, it made me feel sick a lot of the time after. It made it hard to eat the rest of my breakfast because my stomach would be upset, and I left for school with an upset stomach many, many, many days. Of course, being a girl, I believed that it was "stress" or something like that. But in adulthood, I've realized that no, it wasn't stress, it was lactose intolerance. The only time I've really been able to tolerate milk and ice cream well, without Lact-Aid, was during my pregnancies, where I drank prodigious (to me) amounts of milk. Now that I know how much milk many nutritionists and the food pyramid currently recommend, I was really not drinking too much more than what is recommended for everyone, but I thought a half-gallon a day was kind of over the top. Surprise, surprise, I ended up with four children who were then sensitive to dairy while I was nursing in the early months. Going off dairy was a fundamental remedy for Ollie's chronic ear infections; it was my last ditch effort after seeing the ENT and getting scheduled for ear tubes, and it worked--he has probably had four ear infections, if that, since we did that (and yes, he drinks incredible amounts of milk now...). At any rate, I have been guilty of not pushing large amounts of milk on children who express extreme dislike of it. Right now, only Ollie and Rutledge drink high amounts of regular milk, and Rutledge is still kind of sporadic. Ollie drinks what seems like his body weight in milk...whole milk...and he's still shorter than most of his friends. Who knows what his Vitamin D is like. And yeah, I'm very familiar with websites like www.nomilk.com, which on some level I can deeply identify with.

So we had this bone age scan last week that showed Walter has a nearly 3 year delay in bone age. This is a semi-subjective test, so I have to have it re-read by the endocrinologist, but 2 years difference from the chronological age is what is considered within the "normal" range. Tuesday we saw the endocrinologist, which was a humbling experience. I felt like a really bad parent. And I told lies. Lies that made me appear worse than I really am. For some unknown reason, I said that Walter drinks soft drinks 5 times a week, which really isn't true at all. I'm sure there has been a week sometime--like when we visited my Dad and were traveling, when this was true, but I'm not sure why this number came out of my mouth. I'm awaiting CPS with bated breath. He also had eaten primarily a lot of Canadian bacon and eggs in the two meals prior to our visit. Now to be fair, the Canadian bacon is really just what we'd call ham, and it was very lean ham at that, with only 1.5 grams of fat per serving (though I didn't know that until I looked at the package at home). What we didn't have in those meals was fruit or vegetables. Now don't get me wrong--this doesn't mean that none were consumed, just not at these meals. And he asked what Walter had for lunch the day before, and it was really embarrassing: the hot dog and drink deal at Costco. I don't shy away from hot dogs altogether, and this was a very blessed hotdog, which I think adds a little bit of nutritional value to a "bad" food, but I truly don't think I've ever had lunch at Costco before with them. I was kind of representing us on our worst kind of day. Sigh....

The good news: My garden is totally rocking. We have incredible looking lettuce and cabbage and broccoli growing. My spinach is trying. But my one 4x4 garden is producing beyond my expectations. I can't wait to start harvesting, which we should be able to do soon. The rain today can only improve it.

Frances is loving playing softball, and she's really good at it. She has a very good eye, has far, far better hand-eye coordination than the rest of the family (though Rutledge might well be our best...), and she has a strong throwing arm. Tonight was her second game, and it had a lot of drama. Crying girls, gloves thrown down, Frances getting hit in the eye with an errant pitch. I wish that I wasn't always having to ferry people to other activities instead of watching her games.

Walter and Ollie went on their first Boy Scout camping trip this past weekend. The campout was, ironically, held at my friend Amber's former house. Actually, the house was one she rented, and it was on kind of a family compound, but it is a beautiful setting, and thankfully was very close to home. Their next campout is going to be at Dutch Gap, near the Citie of Henricus, and this is a longer one and they'll be able to take the kayak and canoe (note to self: get kayak out of impoundment and figure out how to remove spraypainted graffiti). I'm ready to not attend these weekly Boy Scout meetings. They are enormously boring (sorry to those who are volunteering--I just have a lazy attitude and want to be consumers here rather than attending 1.5 hour meetings every Wednesday). But I think that they will have a lot of opportunities here, especially if they can find some friends and stick with it for a while. Last weekend was cold and wet at the beginning. We definitely need an equipment upgrade as far as their tent and sleeping bags go. I don't know if I should get them an adult-sized sleeping bag or not. Who knows...they just might grow some day soon, and a child's bag will be outgrown. Or they could be half a decade away from puberty and never fill a big bag. Right now I have 2 man Eureka tent that Kerry and I bought at an outdoor store in Afton fifteen years ago. It's not the most rugged tent, but it packs up nice and small. But I think I'm going to replace it with a different Eureka tent, the Apex, which gets great reviews and is pretty affordable from Amazon.

I spent part of the weekend in one of the most beautiful places I know--Front Royal, VA. Alas, I spent the very vast majority of the day-8:20-4:30 indoors with no windows at a business training session, but the drive was breathtaking. Front Royal lies at the gateway to Shenandoah National Park at the north end, and there is just something that absolutely stirs me about getting that first glimpse of the Blue Ridge as you are driving down a road from the eastern part of the state. I get tears in my eyes and feel like I am home when I see Shenandoah or any mountain looming ahead of me. The town itself is not an affluent one, but it is cozy, and there is still a bit of the flavor of the more upscale areas right to the east--Middleburg, The Plains, etc. I love the little stone walls near fields, the rustic homes, the rolling meadows. The training itself was also very inspiring. It's just so different from what I have been used to either in previous training for various jobs and in teaching. I have kind of set myself apart from Christian organizations in the past, partly because I've always felt like maybe I just don't fit in, but I met such wonderful people who really have such a strong belief that we were led to this particular job and that we won't be doing it alone. Classical Conversations is a very organized organization, and this is just what I need at this point. I've had some understandable qualms about what I've taken on, and this really put my mind at rest and has me eager to be engaged and be part of the community that I hope we will find. Still, it was a tiring, very long day, leaving at slightly after 5 and then turning around and driving back again right away.

The so-so, neither good nor bad: I'm really interested in getting another dog. The breed I have identified as a good fit for us is the German Shorthaired Pointer. This dog seems to have little drawback, other than a high activity level, which isn't a drawback, I suppose, if you have one yourself. But they seem to point, retrieve, like water, like people, be intelligent, learn quickly, enjoy challenges, get along well with children and dogs. Plus they look cool. Unless you are my husband, who thinks they look like two or three different dogs put together like Legos. I think partly he has to not like them because I found them, and there's always a power play going on. He can't like them. I wish I had played my own cards a little differently (or that I wasn't playing cards at all...), so it might be a little too late. I'm just feeling lately like I'd rather go for more of an A student dog than a C student. Beagles--gotta love them. But they're a C student. It's not that they aren't smart, they just, well, have some other priorities. And boy are they fun to party with! You can't help but want to just hang out at their place all day and night! But having cleaned up at least 2 major shits in the house today (the latest party involved eating about 2 pounds of peanut and raisin trail mix), I'm just kind of thinking that I'd like a dog with a little more passion about trying to please and be obedient. Maybe even to have some self-control. Of course, the RIGHT answer is that I shouldn't have a dog at all because I don't deserve one. And because it is sure to create more and more and more tension in an already screwed up relationship. But there's a space in my life begging to be filled by something fuzzy and cute that I could hang with. Whoever told me that you could have three dogs in Chesterfield County now should have kept her mouth shut!

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!