appointment day

The doctors are happy. The echo was good, the PFT was stable and the only concern I had was the early bronchiectasis in my right lung, as seen on the CT scan. It explains the trouble coughing up stuff, it happens often after pneumonia, and it's irreversible. So now I have Advair to inhale instead of Albuterol, and a funny thing called an "acapella vibratory PEP therapy system". It looks like a green shampoo bottle. When I breathe into it, it vibrates the air in my lungs to help me hack up those green mucus blobs you see in Mucinex commercials.

Chunky ChocoSnacks

We're on our own for a little while - K's on his first Lynden flights out of the country. I hope he gets to have some fun in between working and sleeping.
So I have the reins again, no more lazy days for this bum. We're off to a busy start, with Tuesdays being ballet-day for T and soccer-night for LittleK. The chauffeur part was okay except for a big snowfall. I threw together a picnic dinner of salad, milk, pasta and chicken chunks (nothing fancy for these picky eaters) in between ballet and soccer. We were heading out the door to get T, picnic bag in tow, soccer gear on, when LittleK asked, "Mama, why are there ripped-up poopy diapers in Chena's kennel??"
Yep. That actually happened today, our dog actually ate that.

So things could only get better after that, and they did. The kids ate chicken chunks at the sports complex without whining, LittleK scored three goals, and bedtime was stress-free.
Tomorrow I'll talk to my doctors, hooray. I'm not expecting much out of the appointment, just 'stay the course' again.
R had his birthday on Monday! He's allergic to eggs so we celebrated by having him blow out candles on top of a birthday-pie. The toy boxes are already overflowing so he only had two gifts to open, but he was happy.
Happy Birthday Dad! Love you lots.

Tomorrow I'm giving the dog some extra food so he doesn't go in search of snacks on his own.

Life is good

It was snowing a little while ago and it was beautiful.
On Wednesday nights I get to leave the house all by myself and drive to the other side of the lake to the local yarn shop. The women there are older, wiser, and funnier than I am, so I get to laugh and learn humility while knitting projects I never finish. When I get home, the kids are fed/showered/sleeping and K gets to leave for hockey.
My husband is great because he does all the hard work, he's an incredible dad, and he doesn't mind my hobbit-feet and man-hands... I only have to put up with some silence and smelly hockey gear.
Actually I started wearing contacts, shaving my legs, and even putting on makeup lately. Maybe the loss of vanity was just a temporary condition.
The lowlifes are gone, that's a happy thing! And only one person gave me dirty looks presumably to make me feel guilty for all the gun-shootin' I didn't do. Nobody's egged the minivan or left nastygrams taped to the door.
We are looking forward with even more excitement now that the closing date for the Laramie house has been set for November 16th! Words can't describe the relief...
I keep meaning to get copies of my CT & echo reports so I can obsess over them. As soon as I get them I'll post some details. My next pulm/rheum appointment is set for the 14th, just after R's 2nd birthday and the same day K leaves for a couple of weeks. I'm predicting the docs will be happy again.

To all the other people I know who are having health issues, I'm thinking about you and knowing you're strong enough to make it through.

So

I turned a year older. Still alive!
Halloween was fun of course. T's Hogwarts student costume was a lot of work but she was happy... LittleK was a beautiful princess and R was cute in his monkey "oot" because the elastic of the hood squished his face and made his cheeks pudgy. We went to a couple of big indoor events and ended the night with some door-to-door trick-or-treating in a nice neighborhood. K was out of commission the entire day because he ate something bad.
At 2am, the action started upstairs with loud thumps, screams and what I first thought was another glass bottle hitting the pavement outside... but it was a gunshot and there were a few more which followed. !!!! So I called 911, K went into lock-down mode, the troopers came, the people were arrested and now they're packing their things because they're being evicted. The shots were fired out the window, by the chick who lives up there, because they were being robbed.
The apartment manager said she'd let us out of our lease and refund our deposit if we want to leave. K didn't offer up his opinion but I said I don't want to look for another place, move all this stuff, and uproot the kids again. I'm also convinced the management will find decent people to move in upstairs, after all of this.
It sort of sounds like we're living in a slum but we're not, really! These buildings are practically new and only one lot away from the girls' school, we're minutes away from shopping, the commute is great from this side of Wasilla, and all the other neighbors are friendly. LittleK and I even said hi to the governor yesterday in the school parking lot - her daughter goes to our school.
Get this though - when I went to pay rent, the apartment manager said that the "rumor" is that I'M the one who freaked out and got out a gun!!!

Flixster - Share Movies

You know you've made an impression when your stranger neighbors tell the landlord you've been shootin' up the place. I go back and forth between cracking up about it and wondering why the hell would anyone pinpoint a mom of three kids for something like this... motherhood is really not that bad! I really didn't glare at anyone in the parking lot and I only yelled at smokers one time.
So,
February is not that far away, we'll get to the serious house-hunting soon.

O Canada

This bit of news is pretty exciting...
I just noticed it's from almost a year ago (!) - I've been avoiding PH research lately, it had to take a back seat to all the big stuff and all the little stuff like blogging, Harry Potter and sudoku. Leg-shaving, hair-doing and contact-wearing all fell by the wayside too, more evidence of how much my husband must really love me!

55

We've got a deal set to sell our house in Laramie... it's under contract!!!! hope hope hope hope
K finished IOE yesterday and had a fun day today, he got to take R to the sports complex for Turf for Tots. LittleK had a blast at kindergarten, watching a movie and having a teddy-bear picnic. T's class was treated to a special pizza lunch because their wind-up turtle won a wind-up turtle race during the school assembly.
School sounds pretty tough these days, No Turtles or Teddy Bears Left Behind.

I had a great day because my echocardiogram this morning showed a huge decrease in my estimated pulmonary artery pressure. In May, it was in the 70's, back in Laramie at its worst it was about 130, and today it measured about 55 mmHg. 55!! Normal is 15 to 30 I think. My pulmonary function tests and six-minute-walk went well too, mostly because the respiratory therapist cracks me up. Next week I go in for some lab tests and a CT of my lungs, we'll see how active the autoimmune stuff is and if there's any recent lung damage. Then I wait two weeks to hear the doctors describe the results, even though I always get a printout of the CT/echo/lab results from medical records and figure it out for myself first.
Time to put this great day to rest and listen to the upstairs party for a while before I get to sleep. Thanks for stopping by to read.
Goodnight!

Look!

Here's Abe's Bemidji Pioneer article:
J.W. Smith sells bracelets to benefit student with leukemia
Michelle Ruckdaschel Bemidji Pioneer
Published Wednesday, October 17, 2007

At the beginning of this year, Abe Fagerstrom, who was diagnosed with leukemia at age 2, completed more than three years of chemotherapy.

But six months later, the first-grader at J.W. Smith Elementary School relapsed and is back in a Twin Cities hospital undergoing treatments.

While Abe is away, J.W. Smith is offering its support by selling blue-and-white bracelets marked with the words “Abe is an All Star!” to benefit the 6-year-old and his family. Blue and white are the school’s colors and J.W. Smith is the “Home of the All-Stars.”

Abe Fagerstrom, 6, of Bemidji, smiles from his hospital bed for a photo taken in August.

“This is just catching like wildfire,” said first-grade teacher Hallie Baldwin, who would be Abe’s teacher this year upon his return to school.

“We ordered 1,000 (bracelets), and we just received our second shipment of 1,000,” said kindergarten teacher Nancy Aitken, who had Abe in her classroom last year.

The bracelets are available for purchase at J.W. Smith and the other schools in the Bemidji School District, as well as at the Early Childhood Family Education office in Bemidji and local businesses. The minimum donation requested for a bracelet is $2.

J.W. Smith began selling the bracelets about a month ago after a daughter of one of its PTO presidents, Annie Laituri, heard from a friend about a bracelet fundraiser for a child who was sick in Minneapolis.

Baldwin said the fundraiser for Abe, which has raised about $1,600 so far, has been a wonderful expression of support for the Fagerstroms.

“It’s a real encouragement for the family and for him,” she said.

Abe’s parents, Al and Kelly Fagerstrom, split their time between their home in Bemidji and Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, where Abe is undergoing treatments.

“One of us is usually in the Cities with Abe,” Kelly Fagerstrom said. “He does come home for, sometimes, three or four days here or there.”

She said Abe will have about two-and-a-half more years of chemotherapy. She noted that he is starting to feel the effects of the treatments — he gets sick and lacks energy.

“And it’s hard for him not to be in school with all his friends,” Kelly Fagerstrom said.

But, she said, Abe has a positive attitude.

“He’s still a happy little 6-year-old boy,” said Kelly Fagerstrom, adding that the bracelet sales mean a lot to Abe. “He thinks it’s so cool.”

This isn’t the first time J.W. Smith has surrounded the Fagerstroms with support.

When Abe was diagnosed four years ago, the school held a benefit for him and his family. At the time, his brother Isaac was a first-grader at J.W. Smith. Now, Isaac is a fifth-grader and Ben, the youngest brother, is in kindergarten.

“We cannot say enough good things about J.W. Smith,” said Kelly Fagerstrom, adding that the whole community has been very supportive. “That just helps us so much.”

And the support continues.

“In every hallway in the school, there’s a picture of Abe,” Baldwin said.

Also, J.W. Smith staff members and parents are planning a spaghetti dinner benefit for Abe and his family set for 4-7 p.m. Nov. 18 at St. Philip’s Church. A bake sale and raffle will be included.

Meanwhile, Abe’s fellow students are posting messages on his CaringBridge Web site and writing him letters as well as buying bracelets.

“It doesn’t make any difference what we do in the school, the children just want to help,” Baldwin said.

To read a journal about Abe or leave him a note, visit his CaringBridge Web site at caringbridge.org/mn/abe.

We miss you guys. Hopefully for one of the upcoming holidays we can all be together and hear all of Uncle Brian's new (whatever) jokes.

A favorite

Originally uploaded by 5eskimos

Here's a photo we took at the Alaska Railroad depot on their big Family Day this past spring. It's one of K's favorites because misterguy looks alot like K's Grandpa John...

thump, stomp, puff, poo

Despite all the elapsed time and distractions, my brain is slowly recalling what life was like about, uh, ten or twelve or fifteen years ago when I lived in apartments and had a solid class-schedule of my own (not of someone related to me under the age of 9)... It's the upstairs people. For certain there's a guy in his twenties with shaggy hair and zit scars who somehow seems to have a hottie girlfriend with long dark hair and two fiercely yippy dogs. His car is the standard-issue dirty little black sedan with duct tape holding up the front fenders, parked next to my standard-issue no-frills green mamavan. There may have been another roommate in mid-August when we moved here but he loaded his weight-set and backpacks into his big red no-muffler-having truck weeks ago.
I knew what we were in for on the first night, when the kids and I tried getting to sleep despite the steady love-thumping directly above their bedroom. Since then there's been a drunk-vs-drunk knock-down drag-out butt-whoopin', glass bottles dropped three stories to the parking lot, loud music whenever and serious stomp-walking.
So now I'm the bitchy old mom with ugly clothes and no makeup, glaring at people in the parking lot, yelling out the window at the jerks from the next building smoking upwind of my windows. That's me.
Speaking of, after the chain-smoking lady downstairs moved in a couple of weeks ago, Dawn at the rental office slowly and kindly said that yes, smoking is allowed in all apartments (her eyes were saying you moron you live in a cheap [though deceptively respectable in appearance] apartment in Wasilla where everyone smokes and parties and has yippy dogs they drive around in monster trucks).
The real winner though in all this World of Apartment Wonders - something that I didn't see all those ten, twelve, whatever years ago- was the chunk of pet doo-doo I found in one of the coin-op washing machines tonight, obviously separated from its two partners on the floor of the laundry room. Wonders never cease.

photos, finally

So here are all the photos I've had tucked away in the camera. Not all, but enough to show what we've been up to... I couldn't get the caption thing figured out so here's the run-down:
We soaked in the hot tub and had a great picnic at Gramma & Grampy's Tolsona cabin,
watched some Wasilla High School football,
ate some pudding at nap time,
floated Wasilla Lake in the kayaks,
rode ponies at the Alaska State Fair,
had a great first day of school,
enjoyed the big family barbecue with aunties, uncles and cousins,
whooped it up at one of G/G's fiddle dances,
sculpted mud at Point Woronzof,
and had a blast at the Bear Paw Festival.
The four smiling women are (back L-R) Aunt Wanda and Auntie Roseanne, and (front L-R) Auntie Sharon and my Mom!


On the left, I was suckin' up the O2 in Laramie in December 2006...
On the right, I was feeling the effects of all the changes we'd made by July 2007!

Packrats Anonymous

So I was sitting here doing sudoku yesterday morning, silently dreading the arrival of the movers, when I heard the deep rumble of a semi truck slowly getting closer. I looked out the window and realized that the movers were here, half an hour early, with a SEMI.
It was only half-full (which is still just ridiculous) but I was shocked, having expected a mere moving van. We opted out of the 2-stop delivery (here, then storage), so the kids and I are living in the shadows of our great piles of useless junk. They're having a great time finding hiding spots and forts which they instantly fight over. Everyone's thrilled to have the beds, TV, DVD player, computer, and familiar old toys back. Especially the TV. R says "eee-beee" as he stands about 2 inches from the screen. LittleK is over there staring at it with her mouth open...
I'll be taking boxes to storage tomorrow, once we get back from an overnight at G/G's in Anchorage. I already brought the Massive Elk Head to the storage unit, it was hilarious because that thing is bigger than I am. There are only two negatives in this situation - K's gone for training until the end of the month, and it smells like musty basement with a hint of gasoline thanks to the (drained) generator that's boxed up in the bedroom. At least it overpowers the doggysmell.
I love Chena but I'm not a very good dog-owner-parent-whatever. I felt guilty about that a couple of days ago and bought him some new chewy stuff and a nice collar. I can't seem to work out the timing of his poop-schedule though, and he's not supposed to be off-leash outside - but he won't poop if I have the leash on him, so he found the living room floor and the girls' bedroom to be convenient crapping spots a few times. yech.
Healthwise, my doctors are really happy with my status right now. I'll have more appointments in three months. Our nephew Abe is sick again and is toughing out more horrible treatments in Minneapolis, so my problems are nothing really. We love you Abe!!!
We're about to escape our cramped quarters and head to Anchorage to do a (very late) family birthday thing for the girls. Pictures on the way soon...

news

Wow things have changed!
K got the Lynden job, packed all of our belongings and drove up from Laramie last weekend. The kids and I had already moved into a tiny apartment here in Wasilla on the 15th with help from our eight-month hosts-turned-movers, Gramma and Grampy. We are forever in their debt. Hey we're forever in debt anyway.
The Laramie house is on the market and we've had some offers. A couple of offers were close to working out but didn't. So... selling a house is a bit stressful.
School started! Kindergarten doesn't start until next week, but they had some testing on Monday of this week. T is adjusting to all the new things - new home, neighborhood, school, teacher, potential friends, etc. She's sort of bummed out that 'nobody wants to play' with her at recess, but that will hopefully change soon. She calls her best friend in Laramie about once a week. She reads book after book. The other options are playing with her brother and sister or going outside with the dog for a while. LittleK is super excited for school and is happy to have her dog back.
We're roughing it without couches, a table or a TV until the moving van gets here about September 4th. Our little car-DVD player stopped working a long time ago, and we just got phone and internet service yesterday I think.
We're all getting used to rules like being quiet (!), no bikes or toys outside and no storage room inside for them, park your car this certain way, don't use the dishwasher at this time of day, don't let your kids play outside (!), etc. The apartment grounds are half-paved lots and half-gravel for dogs to poop on, no playground in sight. Hopefully six months will pass quickly. Other than those minor annoyances we all like Wasilla so far.
R is vertically-inclined. Of course that means he falls down from the heights he reaches so there's always some bump or thump happening. He has no fear on ladders or stairs at the playground and since he started running, he's hard to catch. His speech still isn't very clear but he tries new words all the time. We like to try to get him to say 'sudoku' (dukka-doo) and we're still trying for 'please' (eee).
LittleK is boorrrrrrrrrrred and Misterguy pooped so I'll have to leave it at that.

relatives, interview, moooooose

T & K cruised on up the AlCan in four days. They showed up at about 6pm on July 3rd. The sisters were such polite little best friends to each other for two whole days! It was hard for me to really enjoy that peace because I knew what was just around the corner, glaring, tattling, scratching, hissing and yes, biting. And wart-threats. K had to go back to Laramie on the 9th.
We've all been adjusting pretty well to this weird refugee stage of our lives. The day camps are a nice distraction and having the messy, smelly old minivan back is really comforting. I was doing a sort of inner-William Wallace thing when I drove it again for the first time... FREEDOMMMMMM! The kids and I call it the Moose Car because of the noise the power steering makes when we turn. The girls want to put some fake antlers on the roof to see if the real moose along the side of the road will notice.
LittleK would have been signed up for Kindergarten if we were still in Laramie, as their school district allows four-year-olds who will turn five by September 15th. Here in Anchorage and Wasilla, the birthdate deadline is September 1st. So we're jumping through the hoops of 'Early-Entry' stuff: a psychologist's evaluation of her IQ and visual & motor skills, and some other paperwork. We could have gone through the expense (and boredom) of another year of preschool for her but we decided she'll be much better off in Kindergarten. The psychologist said she's ready - we'll know more when his written report comes in the mail. Now all we need is to know which city we'll live in and which school these kids will attend!
K came back up this weekend for a job interview on Friday. He said it went well and the company will call him back this coming Friday... !!!!! He was able to be here for our big family potluck but had to get on the jet to Denver at midnight last night.
All the people who were here last night included: our Chidester relatives Wanda and her daughter Heidi, Auntie Sharon, Uncle Paul, Auntie Roseanne, Rick, Peggy & Pat and kids, K & me & kids, and Gramma & Grampy. There was an abundance of delicious food and non-stop kid noise. Heidi & Wanda are visiting this week from Albuquerque and it's so interesting to hear everyone's stories about those old Montana Chidesters. Genealogy research can create priceless connections and memories...
As for me, I'm in the waiting stage between 3-month doctor appointments. I had some blood drawn last week and still have frequent coumadin-monitoring done. I feel fine except for some chest congestion, an easy price to pay for kissing germy kids.
I''ve been feeling like Mama the Conqueror! I defeated three nasty plantar warts which had their hold on T's feet for a few months. Two words: duct tape. They most likely won't come back but since the ick factor is pretty high I'll be checking our family feet for a long time.

... more cat-fighting to stop. And now they woke up their brother.

quick hi

Happy Birthday Grandma R! Happy Birthday to BigB in Bemidji!
I have to leave now and referee some disputes.
Favorite quote of the week: "I will touch you with my warty foot if you don't stop bugging me!!" (big sister to little sister) ... ew, warts!

birthdays, travels...

Happy Birthday to my sisters! P yesterday, J tomorrow. My youngest brother had a birthday last week, one of my nieces turns 3 on the 4th, and one of my nephews will be 10 on the 7th! Our Minnesota relatives have some special days coming up this month too...
Today is the 13th anniversary of the day K and I were married. Right now he and T are driving between Dawson Creek, BC, and Whitehorse, YT. They started their long drive up early Saturday morning and made it nearly 800 miles that first day. Sunday, they drove from Lethbridge, AB to Dawson Creek. Hopefully they'll get as far as Whitehorse tonight, then finish the drive tomorrow night.
R is screaming at me, he wants me to fix a hopelessly broken toy and now he's screaming harder because he just hit his face with it. I think it's nap time.

AlCan Minivan

Happy Belated Dad's Day!!
INR is a powerful little thing, a tiny little bullseye of a test result you must target when you're taking Coumadin. When mine is tested the pharmacist rattles off the mandatory questions about bleeding, falling, bruising, changes in diet, and missed doses, while the kids climb the walls in the tiny little 'coumadin clinic' room. LittleK chooses which finger of mine gets jabbed and then we wait while the machine calculates my INR, magically pulling the tiny drop of blood into a three-pronged red line leading somewhere inside the plastic box. I have to repeat this test every week if it's below 2.0 or above 3.0. Today I hit the bullseye so I won't have to drag the kids to the coumadin clinic for another three weeks!
Coumadin changes you. You say goodbye to your normal amounts of olive oil, broccoli, salad, parsley, asparagus, green tea, anything soy-based, and lots of other things which contain vitamin K. Can't have alcohol either. The whole point of taking Coumadin is making blood 'thinner', so there's less of a chance of developing deadly blood clots. Dr. Voelkel in Denver put me on this stuff since PH makes a person's blood vessels in the lungs constricted. I really hate it but I understand it and accept it.
I actually did try the whole bus ride-across-town-with-the-kids thing. It was a very sunny, very windy day a few weeks ago. LittleK could hardly contain her excitement when she saw the bus coming towards our stop by the library. We spent some time at the mall and headed home on another bus with a short side-trip to the grocery store... by the time we were on that second bus she was singin' another tune, "We SHOULD've just taken the CAR!" We ended up being picked up by Gramma after missing our last connection by a minute or two. Crazy.
We're into the second week of Preschool Summer Camp. This was the best idea I've had in a loooong time. It's only two hours a day, four days a week, but it's nice for all of us, especially LittleK. Today they went swimming. Last week they had field trips to the fire station and to a park for a picnic. Last week's obstacle course was a blast I guess, my kid "beat all the boys!!"
Grampy's busy with his garden and flying and fishing, Gramma is in Hawaii this week having returned from Nome and Golovin last week. The big family reunion in Golovin is in two weeks, but I can't go. We're not exactly rolling in piles of cash, and K & T should be just pulling into the driveway after setting the record for Fastest Time Up the AlCan in a Minivan.
I focused some of my obsessiveness on doing some Wasilla house-hunting lately. We can probably get about 1100 square feet of a house, on about an acre. It's beautiful out there but rough around the edges. Just the way we like it.
I could go into some boring self-analysis but it's better just to keep that in my head, and go to bed.

cannula schmannula

Hey, we're pretty thrilled around here - I'm well enough to be off of the oxygen. I can just be normal old me again!
The tests I went through showed my lung disease is stable. There wasn't any decrease in inflammation on the CT scan, but there wasn't any increase either. The significant test, the echocardiogram, showed a drop in my pulmonary arterial pressure from 80 three months ago to between 70 & 75 now. That's still about double a normal PAP but it's great that it's decreasing. SO, the doctors are not referring me to the specialist in Seattle, and my meds will all stay as they are for another three months, then we'll repeat this whole process. A week after I saw the doctors I had a six-minute walk test (without oxygen) and an ABG... I walked farther than I did a week earlier, and had o2 sats no lower than 95, which proved that I really don't need supplemental oxygen. Sea level is the place to be.

Thank you to GrandmaR for the care and help in Laramie recently. And of course to everyone who helps us, wow, we need it and appreciate it.
Other stuff-

• my 2007 veggie seedlings are yet more proof that I should stay away from plants
• T's last day of school is tomorrow! Goodbye second grade!
• I signed the girls up for summer day camps, K in June, T in July
• R's way better at telling us what he needs except for his word "ssss" which has about 10 possible meanings. juice? cheese? please? brush?
• "beepy"=Grampy, "mom"=Gramma, "mama"=mama, "whatwhat"=LittleK
• K is packing and cleaning the Laramie house... poor guy
• my dad visited over the weekend and we saw Nanny at her place
• Gramma & Grampy are power landscapers

I've come to realize lately that some of the things I've grown to value in life are meaningless. I finally understand that I can't hope to influence anyone about anything, except for my kids. I especially hope they understand what their choices are, how important it is to think for themselves, to be loving, and to never stop learning.

They may even learn how to grow vegetables.

splish splash

Hope your Mothers' Day was happy. My family gave me special things like flowers, candles and chocolate.
I can't think right now because the kids are screaming at each other and R is trying to eat plants.

We've finally had some great weather for playing in the backyard (R eats sand, LittleK drives the skidsteer with Grampy) and bike rides. I may even get brave enough to ride with the kids to the bus stop and try the bike/bus mode of transportation.
LittleK stopped liking storytime at the library so our Friday mornings have changed a little. I took her to a lunchtime kids' group at the Dimond Center today, she likes it so far.
We got to visit with the newest baby in the family, Orson, his mama B, and his other grandma C. He is sooo precious with his light red hair and his I'm Serious Eyebrows. B played the guitar and sang some beautiful songs. When she sings I understand that for the rest of us who can carry a tune, we probably don't sound at all as good as we think we do and we don't even come close to having talent like hers. Lucky Orson and his dad!
I lined up my appointments for next week: PFT, 6-minute walk, chest CT and echocardiogram, pulmonologist & rheumatologist. The results determine whether or not I get a referral to the PH doctor in Seattle.
So since I just caught R splashing in the toilet water I'm moving on... goodnight!

at least it smells good

I'm into baking bricks now. At least that's what they end up being despite their hopeful beginnings in the breadmaker. We still eat them, even though they're brick-ish and salt-free. The book I bought about low-sodium cooking fills me with guilt and hope at the same time. Bread without salt will take a lot of getting used to.
What else... I've started some seeds, tried making an eskimo drum for R, bought a bicycle and an infant bike seat, and checked out Eagle River properties. Who knows where we'll end up living - this housing market is crazy!
The bicycle is for getting out of the house, which the counselor suggested last Friday. R did okay with the short bike rides we've taken, but he hated the helmet. I don't really get winded riding the bike, surprisingly, but we haven't gone up any hills or anywhere past one block.
The counselor also suggested putting LittleK into a preschool again, and to try meditation exercises, visualization techniques and more yoga. We'll see. I know for sure I need to get her help on how I can stop alienating people. Maybe she has a good bread recipe too.

oops!!

Not much of a blog lately. That can mean I'm too busy to write, or my life is too excruciatingly dull to write about, or what I've been thinking about writing is just inappropriate... Actually all three reasons apply this time.
Since the end of March: K turned 40-something, Gramma & Grampy took me and the kids to their cabin near Glenallen, Anchorage's snow melted, and a bunch of other stuff happened that I've forgotten about. Grampy left this week for Hawaii. Gramma's been sidelined by a big muscle spasm in her back but she's recovering. T started soccer finally in an age-appropriate league, we're all excited about that - she's got some soccer potential. LittleK's happy for spring weather but refuses to play outside alone. R's new words include "book", "DON'T", "duck", and "hot". He is suddenly terrified of taking baths!
I'm trying to understand why it seems so important to me to speak and write well. It should be more important to hear and understand what someone is trying to get across, than it is to constantly edit what they're saying. The only reason I can find for this particular obsession of mine is that I want my kids to be well-educated, and for all their words and actions to reflect that. I get a little carried away sometimes...
The counselor I was supposed to see a few weeks ago called in sick and then went on vacation. So I haven't seen her, but I've found ways to not see this present life as such a challenge. There are people with problems far worse than mine.
It's time for my daughter and me to make some banana bread and homemade salsa. I just have to convince her to turn off the TV.