Just chatting...

Get ready to be shocked.  I used my sewing machine.  Hey - stop laughing - it's totally true!  I wish that thing didn't intimidate me so much because I'd love to "create" things.  It's my goal while we live up here for me to conquer my fears and become at least slightly proficient with it.  My project, you ask?  I lined G's curtains with flannel!  His room is the furthest from the furnace and it got cold last year :( and although we have a space heater in there, I thought maybe I'd try to help the energy efficiency so since so much cold air comes in from the windows, I started there.  Mom had sent me home with a full sized sheet that she'd picked up from the Goodwill for one of her hooked rugs.  It worked out great but it only lined two curtains - and there's four in his room!  So I'll have to find another sheet to do the other curtains. 

It doesn't "look" pretty, but it's certainly functional.  My favorite part is how much light it blocks.  I'm hoping that it will keep G in bed a little later in the mornings.  He's so Ed's child - he is a total morning person.  I never have been and probably never will be.  My Grandma never was - I can remember her being up until at least midnight whenever we visited, even though Grandpa went to bed at like 8:00 pm!

Speaking of Granny, she was taken to Kalispell the other night.  She's picked up a flu and so she hasn't been able to keep any food down and of course that doesn't help her fight the flu.  Her chemo is going well but it can't be easy on her - she turned 84 in March.  My family seems divided - some think she should just be left alone (to die, presumably?) and the rest of think that medicine exists for a reason and that chemo could help her.  Look at the improvement it's made already.  Here's the question - has anyone asked her what she wants?

Off that subject, I finished sanding G's bed frame and started staining it, only to find that I didn't sand it well enough.  The lighter of the two stains, the cherry that I was putting on the horizontal pieces...did not come out anywhere close to the test piece of wood that I did last week - though it is a nice brown color (with no red, as cherry might imply).  It is much, much darker.  Greaaaaaaaaaaaat.  The dark walnut for the vertical pieces of the bed frame is almost black, again nothing like the test wood.  But I think once it's done it will look nice, very masculine.  I am looking forward to putting it in G's room so that his room might actually be "finished" for awhile.  I do need to paint over the holes that I put putty in from shelves I had to move as he was using them to hang from, and I need to sand and paint the extra Grandpa B. dresser that Linda gave him but that just gets hidden away in his closet anyway.  I need to find a blue bedskirt so I dno't have to make one.  I am going to have to staple it to the frame underneath because I can't put it on the regular way because of the way the frame is.  But, since I lined the curtains, doggone it, I should be able to sew a hem to make 4 pieces of a bedskirt. 

I will post pics of it when it is closer to done.

Let's put this bad day to bed!

I thought the day was going to be great.  G had woken up at 6 am (after I stayed up until 1 am) but Ed grabbed him, made a sippy cup for him and put him in bed with me and then Ed went to work.  I never even woke up until about 8 am when I realized he was in bed with me!  G woke up about 20 minutes later, which was odd and wonderful!  He rarely sleeps that late anymore!
When we got up I asked G if he wanted yogurt or oatmeal for breakfast.  He didn't say which until I held each item out and he chose the oatmeal.  I am still trying to get him to use his words and he's still trying to show me that he doesn't want to.  I started the water boiling and walked away from the stove for a few minutes to put the dogs out.  After letting them back in I headed toward the kitchen and that's when I saw the flames.  Yes, FLAMES!  They were taller than the saucepan on the stove!  I grabbed the pan off the burner and quickly poured a cup of water on the flames.  Whew - catastrophe avoided.

G and I went outside to wander and just enjoy the nice weather.  G likes to use his kiddie pool as his turtle shell now.  He'll hide underneath it and when I pretend to wander around looking for him he giggles.  At some point he pops up and says, "Here I am!"   

 Yes, that's G, in autumn, sitting in a swimming pool in his sweats and in the middle of the roadway.  Well, it's the little road to our house - travelled only by us but you get the picture.

I said, "Are you too warm in your jacket?"  This is how he answered me!

I still cannot believe that I created this little person, that he's a part of me and that we share the same blood.  Don't mind my hair - I'm trying to grow it out and it's going to be a long and ugly process.  I told Ed that if it starts to look like a mullet it is his husbandly duty to tell me so I don't make an idiot out of myself.

I had taped off the vertical pieces of G's bed so I could start staining the horizontal ones.  I put a few coats of stain on and it has turned out much, much darker than the test pieces.  Oh well, it's still very nice looking.

I decided that I was going to start a fire in the fire pit so that I could burn all the paperwork in my shred box.  I hate having to sit there and run a few pieces of paper through the shredder, then the shredder overheats and I have to walk away, etc... so I thought it would be easier to just burn it all.  I started to chop some kindling and I was holding a cut piece with my left hand when I swung the ax (or is it axe?) with my right.  The only problem was, I didn't hit the wood - I hit my thumb.  Oh.Em.Gee.  It hurt right away and I just tried not to swear or cry out since G was standing right there watching me.  The pad of my thumb started bleeding right away and when I looked closer I could see under the nail it was already turning colors (within seconds).  I could also see the mark (or crack) right through my nail where the ax head hit.  It took me a little while to think of it, but man am I ever glad that Ed hasn't sharpened the ax since we bought it for him for Father's Day 2009.  If the ax had been sharp I'd be missing the end of my left thumb, I have no doubt of that. 

I had the phone outside with me so I called Dispatch and asked them to send Ed home.  I tried to get G to come into the house with me so I could get something to stop the bleeding but he thought that was the best opportunity to take off and run away from me.  So I'm ambling after him, trying not to cry from the pain and from the frustration that comes along with being the mother of the world's most active 2 year old boy.  I got him inside and wrapped my finger and tried not to pass out from the pain and waited for Ed to come home.  Twenty minutes later we went back outside because I had to get up and move around.  I put another coat of stain on G's bed and then I got him to come back inside by using "G bait," otherwise known as cheetos.  Ed arrived about 20 minutes later and because his Dispatcher hadn't told him why I needed to come home, he'd spent the 30 mile drive thinking about what could be wrong.  He was "relieved" that it was me and not G or anything, but he was also very sympathetic.  He looked my thumb over and decided that I didn't need stitches but that I was going to be hurting pretty bad for the next few weeks.  Oh, joy. 

He fashioned me a makeshift splint to protect my thumb, after he called the Ranger Station to see if they had a splint on the ambulance that the QRU has.  The ambulance people weren't there so he told Connie, the lady who runs the office, what happened.  I took a few pain pills and ended up falling asleep, thanks to the fact that Ed took over G duty since I was so ouchy.  Later that evening Connie showed up with an actual thumb splint from her own house.  :)  It was so much more comfortable than the one Ed made, though I certainly really appreciated the one Ed made.  By that time my thumb had swollen and gotten darker under the nail.  I hope I can sleep tonight!    

Early Intervention Evaluation (hang in there with me)

I did it, I called. There are just too many little things that are bothering me about G's development - the first and foremost being his lack of language. I can tell that his explosive (not like Captain A-Hole explosive - normal 2 year old explosive) behavior are connected to his inability to communicate to us what he needs/wants, etc... Well after talking to an intake counselor on the phone for about an hour, and him asking a lot of evaluative questions, he thinks there is reason for concerns about his verbal skills and "self help" (i.e. feeding self, undressing self, attempting to dress self, etc...) that a face to face evaluation is warranted. He said that he's ahead of the curve in cognitive and motor skills but that there are some definite red flags for autism. I am not going to "worry" about the autism thing because I really don't think he's even on the spectrum, even though according to the intake counselor he scored an 11. A lot of the questions were based on interaction with other children and such, and G just hasn't had that. For example, how does he play with other kids? Well the few times he has played with other children he kind of goes off by himself. Not because he's autistic but because he's used to playing alone - right?


Anyway, I'm concerned mostly about his lack of language. He doesn't do pretend play and he never verbalizes his wants and needs. He's got "gaps" in his skills that concern me, especially since I plan to home school him. There is no point in starting a preschool curriculum when he can't verbalize. Just like potty training, he "gets" it but he doesn't get that has to verbalize it. If I take him to potty every 30 minutes he knows exactly what he's supposed to do but if I don't take him, he never mentions it and messes his pants. That's why I've backed off the potty training.

So anyway, the intake counselor is fairly certain that G needs to be seen and evaluated. I'm fine with that - it's a free federal program and if there is something we can work on, that's GREAT! If there's nothing "wrong" then that's great too.

Ed is mad at me.  He doesn't want me to do it and says, "Leave him alone - he's just fine." What I can’t get him to understand is that there is no harm in the evaluation. I am the one who is with him day in and day out and it’s like my car – since I’m the one who drives it, if I hear something clanking I’m going to notice it first. I think more than anything else, there is something WE’RE not doing as parents to help G’s learning and as his primary caregiver and educator I want help so that I can do the very best for G.

I'm a little ticked off at Ed myself because I was telling him that we needed to back off or wean him from the sippy cup. It’s a lot like a bottle and he “drinks” from it almost the same way he took the boob. I said, “That might be hindering his speech because he develops his actual mouth by using an open cup versus a straw cup, etc…” And that ass had the nerve to say, “Maybe if you hadn’t breastfed him until he was 2 his language skills would be better.” Oh, yeah right, Ed. Yeah, I’m sure my nurturing him at the breast is what has caused him to not be able to say the actual names of animals or speak 3 word sentences.

ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you guys think I’m being proactive or ridiculous? Be honest with me. I know I’m a first time momma but I just want to give him every opportunity possible.

If my Dad was alive I could ask him what parts of this are true...

Railroad tracks.


The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.  Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads.  Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.  Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.


So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.  And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.  Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. 

So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?' , you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses).

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.  The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything... and CURRENT Horses Asses in Washington are controlling everything else.