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The Boy has learned to lock doors. So far, it's not an issue. But I suspect it won't be long. I laugh now, but I remember the day he was tall and coordinated enough to reach and turn the door knobs. We thought THAT was trouble. We had no idea. And I shudder to think of what the little brain behind those blue peepers will think of next.
I can't help it. It's not that I don't have anything to say. You probably don't need me to remind you of that. But I've been supplied with a steady stream of distractions this week and I just can't seem to focus.
First, there's the blog redesign I mentioned a few weeks ago. I was serious about that. Honest. I'm tirelessly teaching myself enough web coding to be dangerous and having a friend help me do a complete design overhaul of my little website. I am so excited I can hardly stand it, and I hope to have all the changes live in the next ten days or so. Keep your fingers crossed.
Second, I have had a dream come true. I don't know how many of you read The Pioneer Woman, but if you don't, take a second to check her out. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Cool, huh? She is one of my blogging heroes. Heroines? She does more with her 24 hour day than seems humanly possible, but is brilliant and funny and, well, lovely. She also provides some of my favorite photography and Photoshop tips and tutorials. Seriously, she talks Photoshop like a normal person. It's refreshing.
So. The distraction. Well, first you have to understand that most of the photo editing knowhow out there is for fancy pants people with real Photoshop. Those of us with Photoshop Elements are often left to our trial and error (and drooling) in order to recreate some of the edits and effects. But I've really enjoyed clicking around in PSE - and, honestly, it does nearly everything "real" PS does. So I don't even know what I'm missing, most of the time.
Except actions. I have coveted The Pioneer Woman's actions for months. I have learned about layers and masks and all that crazy talk, just to recreate some of the things those fancy PS people can do with ONE CLICK with one of her actions. I thought the day would never come.
But! Actions! For Elements! It's like Christmas!
(I've probably lost some of you. What with all the PSE and action and masks/layers talk. Sorry. Just have to get it out of my system.)
PW (Pioneer Woman) posted two full sets of PSE actions that act JUST LIKE the "real" PS ones! So I followed the 47 step installation instructions and waited 100% impatiently for them to fully load, but I am now the proud owner of my very own PW actions for Elements. What used to take me 7 million layers and endless adjustments and A LOT of time - now takes me, literally, one click. It's like cheating.
Here. Let's pretend you asked, and I'll show you.
Here's one of my favorite photos of our family. Nancy took it when Colt was about a month old.
Cute, huh? I know.
But now that I'm armed with actions, I will probably find it increasingly difficult to leave things well enough alone.
Here's the same photo after applying two different actions:
I love the faded color. As if it's an old family favorite I found in a shoebox in the attic. There was nothing wrong with the photo before, but the action added a little oomph. See?
So. Distractions. Yeah. The web design thing. And the Photoshop actions thing. Add the sick toddler thing and - what can I say? - I've slacked with the blogging. I hope hope HOPE I'll be able to unveil the new blog design soon so I will be forced to stop fiddling with it. And I'll eventually get over the shiny-new-toy-ness of the actions, right? Yeah, probably not.
It’s 2010. It’s the age of blogging and social media and iPhones and status updates. It’s hard to believe that just 10 years ago, not everyone had a blog, not everyone had a digital camera or even a cell phone. It boggles my mind. There was life before Google. There were television commercials. People communicated face to face!
And oh, wasn’t it nice?
A few weeks ago I had a moment of radical nostalgia. I climbed up in the attic and pulled down a box I hadn’t opened in several years. And spent hours looking through pictures and mementos from the fall semester I spent abroad in 2002. Sadly, that was in THOSE days – the ones before blogging and digital photography. I have often thought how unfortunate it is that I don’t have an online, written record of that semester like I would if I went now. Let’s be honest, you poor people would be subjected to (likely) a daily dose of rambling from a 19 year old college kid on a 3-month trek through Western Europe littered with backpacking hostels, Eurorail passes, and homesickness. It would surely be overload. But oh – I wish I had those words to go back and read now.
And as I looked through the photos I hadn’t seen in far too long, I realized that the blogging, Shutterfly-ing, social-media-obsessed Sarah of 2010 just couldn’t bear to put all those photos back in the box and shut the lid for another couple years. I had to do something.
So I did. I found Digmypics.com. I put all my negatives (remember those?) in a box and shipped them off. They digitized all of my photos – at breakneck speed no less – and now you get to enjoy them with me.
Can you imagine if these beauties had remained boxed up forever?
Venice. Everything travels by water - taxis, police, business people. That vehicle in the water is a water bus - public transportation.
That's me. Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark's Square in Venice.
Left: In the Cinque Terre (Five Lands), on the Italian Riviera. Right: At the Leaning Tower in Pisa. It rained ALL DAY, but we climbed every slippery step all the way to the top.
I took 16 rolls of film in one semester. That’s 400 photos. Only 400. I can take that many in a single weekend now, with my digital camera. Can you imagine how many photos I’d have taken if I had limitless digital memory and didn’t have to worry about developing each roll? If only I’d been able to just snap away at different angles like I do now? Taking multiple shots of details and landscapes and people and - just everything.
Yachts in the Monaco Marina.
Playing in the Mediterranean Sea. Italy.
At the Colosseum in Rome.
These pictures are like finding 20 bucks in the pocket of your winter coat when you put it on for the first time since last season. Like buried treasure. I won't even tell you how much time I've spent looking through them in the last few weeks and thinking about the ETERNITY that has passed since I returned from this trip. It was a lifetime ago.
Enjoying a Guinness on the top level of the factory, overlooking Dublin.
My favorite bridge in Europe. The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) in Florence. It's lined with little jewelry stores and it's just adorable.
The Alps. Switzerland.
Ok, I DID tell you I have 400 pictures, right? I promise I'll stop soon.
These are some of my favorite. We took photos of "Twinkie Man" everywhere we went so that Jenni (my friend and travel partner) could send them back to an elementary school class in her hometown - it was helping the kids learn about the places we went. Above: Twinkie Man posing for a (prohibited) photo with Michelangelo's David in Florence, and with Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Below: Twinkie Man with remains of the Berlin Wall.
These photos make me giddy. Dizzy with excitement for my next adventure. Whatever that might be.
The year Jeff and I got married we started this tradition of running outside at the first sight of snowfall to take a family photo. It didn't even matter if the snow stuck to anything, all we needed was enough falling white stuff to create a cute "In the Snow" photo op.
2007 Family Photo in the Snow:
And 2008:
And we added a munchkin for our 2009 pic:
It became a joke for us, since we live in a place where it doesn't really snow. It's not as if we can go outside just anytime during the winter and snap a pic in the snow - we had to take advantage of the first signs of winter weather.
Then came the winter of '09-'10.
During which there have been enough "in the snow" photo opportunities for me to make a flip book.
But then the winds of change blew in. Spring was coming. Warm afternoons. Sunshine. Short sleeves!
And... then we were reminded that we live in Arkansas. When this:
...happened on the first weekend of Spring.
Friends, THAT is almost a foot of snow. In my backyard. During Spring Break. In Ar-kan-sas.
I had heard the forecasts all week. There was a forecasted chance that some freakish snowstorm would hit Eastern Oklahoma and Northwest Arkansas this weekend, but honestly, I've lived here long enough to know that a freakish snowstorm forecasted several days in advance during a week when I was foregoing a coat and Tweeting about things like this:
--was highly unlikely to materialize.
So. About that.
Here's what happened between Saturday night at supper time and Sunday morning when I woke up:
Yeah.
And that was before noon. It snowed for HOURS after that.
So we were forced to freeze our butts off have a ball.
And there you have it. A nice, brisk kick-off for Spring Break 2010. It's supposed to be in the 60s again by Tuesday!
So we have these neighbors.
They're such nice neighbors. They probably aren't aware that since the weather has been nice recently and we can play outside some when we get home from school, I have been hefting my kid up on my shoulders and allowing him to peek over their fence and into their yard.
But they're such nice neighbors that they probably wouldn't mind.
They probably also aren't aware that their backyard happens to contain the single most fantabulous thing EVER - in this toddler's humble little opinion.
Puppy dogs! Puppy dogs! Puppy dogs! Desperate pointing. Near hyperventilation. Puppy dogs! Puppy dogs! Puppy dogs! Mama do you SEE the puppy dogs!?! More desperate pointing.
But they're such nice neighbors so they probably wouldn't mind. Right?
That there is my not-even-two year old. Yeah that one. The one swinging on the big kid swings all by himself even after his Mama tried to convince his Paw he was "definitely too little to be swinging on the big kid swings all by himself". The one that laughs in the face of danger. And is WAY too cool for the more age appropriate jungle gyms on the other side of the park.
The one that is convinced he has the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The same one that believes any slide worth sliding is worth sliding head first. The one who, incidentally, received a face full of dirt and mulch about a half second after this photo was taken:
But brushed himself off, got an encouraging fist bump from his Paw, and was ready to get back on the horse.
The same one that still cannot be bothered with boring tasks like sitting still long enough for his Mama to get a decent picture of the front of his jug.
I know better than to go to Walmart on Saturday afternoons. Really I do. But darn if it isn't the most convenient time of the week to go grocery shopping. And when I go, and circle the lot 27 times just for a chance at a parking spot a quarter mile away from the door, and dodge traffic on my way into the store, I sometimes fantasize about my grocery shopping routine of years past.
In college, I would go to Walmart after work, which sometimes meant after midnight. And hoo boy, I'm here to tell you - THAT'S a convenient time to go to Walmart. I had my pick of front row parking spaces, never had to play chicken with other shopping carts in the cereal aisle, and rarely had to stand in line to check out. No "patiently" waiting while the lady down the aisle from me (whose cart is casually positioned diagonally, carelessly blocking BOTH lanes of shoppers) meticulously decides between brands of chicken broth. No carefully stepping around a Mom having one of "those" days wrangling a cart full of toddlers pulling sugary cereals off the shelves whilst shrieking to the heavens a barely distinguishable jumble of "not fair!" and "puleeeeeeeze".
That was the life.
Nonetheless, I brave the store almost every Saturday afternoon while The Boy takes his nap. I take my list. (And I still forget things.) And I follow my usual route through the store - toiletries first, then back across to the grocery side, shoot up the side through the meat then back to the front going down each aisle, back and forth - small detour over to the Baby Department for diapers and butt paste - then back to the front to check out this week's People Magazine. Riveting, I know.
Every week is more or less the same. Sometimes I bump into someone I know and chat for a minute. Sometimes it's a holiday weekend and the aisles are double crowded. But nothing really bothers me about this process - grocery shopping. I have my routine down to a science and I stick to my list and my route.
I have carefully considered every last detail, including the checkout. Especially the checkout. You see, the checkout at Walmart is a sociological experiment, of sorts. The checker I choose is far more important to me than the length of the line at each register. Meaning, I will NOT get into the shortest line if it means I will have to deal with the wrong checker. Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.
I'll admit, it took me a while to learn this lesson. I used to scan the front of the store for the winning combination of shortest line and emptiest carts and make a bee line for the prize. But no more. I've been burned too many times by the mirage - the shortest line. It's not all it's cracked up to be.
And I've learned to make The Checker Decision very carefully. I've learned to respect the fine line that exists between being old knowledgeable enough to understand that I don't want my hamburger meat to share a bag with my milk or dish soap yet not so old as to think my reusable shopping bags are newfangled nonsense. I've learned that teenage-ish boys do not appreciate the deliberate order in which I place my items on the belt - cold stuff together, baby stuff together, bathroom stuff together, etc. It's almost entirely subjective, and I cannot describe the perfect checker - but I know it when I see it.
This weekend I was had. I scanned the checker selection and made my choice. It was a fairly short line - bonus! I emptied my cart onto the belt - cold stuff first, blah blah. I waited patiently while both shoppers in front of me zipped right through the line. I grinned, satisfied that I had made a wise decision, almost irritated that I didn't have to wait in line long enough to catch up on my Words with Friends.
Then. It happened. As I leaned over to hand my shopping bags to the nice, capable, efficient checker, another checker appeared behind her, smacking her gum to punctuate her arrival. It was shift change. The Josie and the Pussycats stunt double was there to relieve MY checker. And my heart sank. Nooooo. My mind was racing. Can't you wait just five more little minutes? Just one more customer? Look - my stuff is already on the belt! I'll be quick! I promise! Please don't leave me with the girl with blue hair and black nails! I don't deserve this!
And as it turned out, my discriminatory, preconceived prejudices were 100% deserved. (This time.) Before I was granted my receipt, I had the opportunity to explain to this girl that eggs really do need to be bagged horizontally, and that bread doesn't go in the bag before, well, anything -- and a manager visited our register TWICE to override some fool thing she'd entered into the machine. I could feel the eyes of the shoppers in line behind me boring into the side of my head, but I refused to look up and respond with a sheepishly apologetic shoulder shrug. No! I was tricked!
Maybe if I were to call Mr. Walmart and explain to him my theory on the checkout. Maybe if I proposed some sort of policy that would require a suitably comparable substitution for checkers - little old lady for little old lady, teeny-bopper for teeny-bopper. Maybe. Or maybe I persevere, and practice a little patience. Maybe.
I'm getting old. Well, my blog is anyway. 5 years, people. Happy Blogiversary to me! Yep. This week marks five whole years of this wonderful nonsense.
All of it's there, but I don't really recommend you go back and read any of those early posts as the literary merit is, well, arguable. And the pictures are blah. And the (at times) surly attitude leaves something to be desired. But, you know, I wouldn't trade it. I wouldn't trade my "humble beginnings" on Xanga or my somewhat bitter bartender/waitress/college student persona or my random, random rambling.
I have loved this little blog. I have nurtured it and grown it from its original purpose as a landing place for all of my immature rantings and grainy cellphone pictures to a medium that I rely on to share my family - and myself - with all of you.
I've learned to write fewer things like this and more things like this. You've been with me through times like this and even this. And I dare say I've grown. In the last five years I've grown from The Single Gal to a Wife and Mama. And the more I read back through some of my (sometimes painfully embarrassing) old posts, the more I learn about myself, both who I am and who I want to be.
In honor of the occasion, I'm doing some refreshing of the ole blog. You might notice some design changes over the next few weeks. Don't be alarmed. Just doing a little makeover. And don't forget to check out things like the (gajillions of) photo albums along the right hand side over there and the links page for some of my personal favorite blogs.
Happy Blogiversary! Here's to the next 5 years!
I have often been told I am easy and fun to tease. I have never really known whether that's a compliment or just more mocking, but I've heard it for years. And truthfully, I probably deserve it. I tend to say things out loud before thinking about them enough and this often allows me to paint myself into a corner defending one outlandish claim or another because Lord knows I couldn't just cut my losses and say those vile words - so maybe I was wrong.
Moving on.
My knee started to hurt. Quite a bit, actually. And it had been steadily getting more painful for the last six months. I vaguely remember having slight knee pain as a kid, but since I was that girl that played softball and soccer and basketball up until the year it was actually important to know the rules and have some talent (which, if I recall, was pretty early on) it was never really an issue. So my knee hurt once a year when we had to run a mile in P.E.? No biggie.
And when the pain came back in a big way when I was pregnant, I dismissed it as "just one of those things". It certainly wasn't the only thing that hurt for some mysterious, seemingly un-baby-related reason so I still didn't think much of it. When Colt was born and I lost (most of) the (undisclosed) baby weight, it seemed to go away again. Ok.
But you know this story wouldn't be very good if the pain just went away, the end. So fast forward to Summer 2009. I started noticing a bump on the inside of my right knee. After several weeks of the bump, I started to get a little worried but assumed it would go away. I hadn't fallen or hurt myself in any way, so I assumed it was just some randomness and it would find its way back to wherever it came from.
The bump started to feel tender. Really tender. The kind of tender that made me shave my legs reeeeeally carefully and avoid kneeling and take GREAT care when getting up from my desk at work so as not to bump it on the edge of that drawer. Again.
And I may have made the mistake of mentioning all of this to a few friends at work. And I MAY have followed it up with some online "research" I had done to self-diagnose my problem. See below for the softball I lobbed up there for them:
Osgood-Schlatter Disease or Syndrome is a rupture of the growth plate. The condition occurs in active boys and girls aged 11-15, coinciding with periods of growth spurts. It occurs more frequently in boys than in girls. It has been suggested the difference is related to a greater participation by boys in sports and risk activities than by girls.
Following an adolescent growth spurt, repeated stress from contraction of the quadriceps is transmitted through the patellar tendon to the immature tibial tuberosity. This can cause multiple subacute avulsion fractures along with inflammation of the tendon, leading to excess bone growth in the tuberosity and producing a visible lump which can be extremely painful when hit.
Did you get all that?
Basically, I managed to Google my way to a knee disease that accurately described my painful lump but occurs in pubescent boys because they are active in sports.
Let the teasing commence.
Well it finally hurt bad enough to get me to a doctor. And I successfully resisted the urge to begin the appointment with "so I read on the internet...". And after taking a few rounds of X-rays, it was determined that I was suffering from a bone bruise. The doc suggested I "rest it" and it should feel better in a few weeks.
Hmm. So a pain I've had off and on for YEARS will suddenly feel better in a few weeks because now I've seen a doctor about it? And what exactly does "rest it" mean? Should I take a break from all running and exercising and any physical activity more grueling than a flight of stairs in my office building? Check!
I was starting to ease up on my Osgood-Schlatter diagnosis (though the teasing at work did anything but ease up), but wasn't convinced that a bone bruise was the culprit either. So I took advantage of the "you don't need a referral to see a specialist" condition of my insurance policy and made a date with (and learned how to spell!) an Orthopaedic. A handful of appointments and two MRIs later and the mystery bump was still just that. And I started to get a little worried.
And then my doctor suggested I go see a specialist. A super duper specialist. An Orthopaedic Oncologist. Of which there is ONE in the entire state of Arkansas. So we trucked it down to UAMS in Little Rock to see the super duper specialist, who poked my knee bump and scheduled some surgery.
I had just enough time between my consultation and the surgery to get pretty darn worried about this thing. I'm in charge of all the panicking in this family and I was in overdrive. I TRIED not to dwell on the fact that my stupid knee bump required a trip to an Orthopaedic ONCOLOGIST at the Winthrop P. Rockefeller CANCER Institute. But I couldn't help it.
So yesterday.
We checked in about 7:15 and after discussing my name with each new person I met in Pre-Op -- "Yes, my name is Sarah Hood. No hyphens. No double name. Just Sarah Hood. I have tried for three years to convince my insurance company that it is not, in fact, Sarah E. Martin Hood. I don't know why it's weird, but I promise you are about to operate on the correct person." -- I was ready to go.
I vaguely remember being wheeled into the Operating Room with all the big shiny lights hanging from the ceiling. They started sticking little white nodes all over me and the Anesthesiologist kept asking "Are you OK? Are you OK?". I remember there being WAY more people in there than I thought was really necessary. You know, since I'm some sort of expert...
And then I woke up. And within a minute or two Jeff was there telling me that the Doctor had given him the news that it was nothing cancerous. In fact, of the three possibilities he'd narrowed it down to - it was none of the above. It was a mass of tissue and blood vessels and most importantly - it's gone. And will not be back.
So the only other time I was in the hospital and had to do the gross stuff like IVs and hospital gowns, I got to bring home a baby. This time, not so much. This time, all I really got was a black mark on my otherwise spotless medical record. I used to fly right through all those forms - allergies? none!, past surgeries? nope!, hospitalizations? not me! When I was pregnant, my OB doctor told me I was "medically uninteresting" and I just beamed at such a compliment. But now, 27 years of perfect health - down the drain!
So I lived. Obviously. I survived the Knee Bump. And I don't have Osgood-Schlatter's. And I don't have cancer. And I'm spending today (and probably tomorrow) in bed with my knee propped on a pillow and my laptop propped on my...lap. The Boy has been showering me with hugs and kisses, and that's better than the Hydrocodone any day of the week.
I was well into adulthood before I became aware that not every family names their cars.
I grew up with Suzie, my Mom's Subaru station wagon, and my first car (and Tom's first car before me) was Fred. Fred was a Ford Festiva. And he was a gem. For those of you not familiar with the engineering brilliance that was the Ford Festiva, you can just picture an over-sized roller skate. It was one of the smallest cars ever made. Two doors, hatchback. Fred was originally silver, but became patchworked over the years as Tom's teenage driving skills were hard on him. By the time I inherited Fred he had a dark blue hood and a lighter blue grill. I desperately wish I had a picture of him.
Fred was old school. Not even a cassette player. And toward the end of our relationship, his radio signal was getting weak and I experimented with different methods of "tuning" including banging the top of the dash as hard as possible with my fist. This worked about half the time.
Fred was not one for crowds. In fact, though he technically seated 4-5 people, if any of my friends were to sit in the backseat they would be asked to lean forward so the tires wouldn't rub when we went over a bump.
Oh Fred. Fred was part of the family. And all of our friends knew him by name. He was a special guy. So special in fact that when my senior English class was given a writing assignment and asked to write an ode to anyone and anything we chose - I didn't hesitate. Yes, somewhere in my attic is a crudely published "book" assembled by my senior AP English class that includes "Ode to Fred".
Fred eventually moved on, and from time to time I'll see one of his little brothers chugging along the highway and I just smile. Since Fred, there has been a handful of characters, including: Heidi (Honda Accord I drove in college), Stu (Laura and Becky's Subaru in high school), Teddy (Mom's Acura TL), Polly (my parents' Prius), and Annie (Laura's Oldsmobile Alero). Some of you may have noticed the comic book-esque alliteration trend we've got goin' on. We're creative like that.
It honestly never occurred to me that other families don't get together after the purchase of a new vehicle and deliberate on an appropriate name. Is it a boy or a girl? Is she a Polly or a Peggy? Sadly, I am not making this stuff up.
And with that - I need your help. You see, the Hoods have a new car.
Well, new to us. It's a Toyota Highlander and it's heaven.
Things I love about the new-to-us car:
Things I don't necessary love:
I thought about Roxie. You know, Roxie Recall. But I don't think it's quite right. Surely you can come up with something better than that. Let's hear it.
