Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!

Wilbur's artistic San Antonio drawing.

Skinny boy

Emery and I just got hysterical... I helped him put on his tights for his ballet dress rehearsal today and he's so skinny that he looks like he's made of tinker toys. Doug said he looked like a dancing licorice whip.

Expotition (which is a long line of everybody) to the North Pole (which is just a thing that you discover)

Doug has been reading the Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh to the boys each night. Last night they read about the expotition to the North Pole. I can hear them in there giggling and loving Pooh. It is delicious to hear them. Roo falls into the river and this reminds me of Wilbur eating ice cream:

there is a squeak from Roo, a splash, and a cry from Kanga. Roo has fallen into the river!
Roo is being brave and not panicking, and even asking his Mum to watch him as he is swimming in the stream, although really he is just being carried along by the current.

When we go to get ice cream, Wilbur always wants a dish of it but he really doesn't like ice cream. He says it's too cold. He does, though, insist on a dish. Then he dips his spoon in it and brings the spoon almost to his lips and says, "MMMMMmmmmm. Ice Cream!"

We all think it's so funny because he never takes a taste. It's sort of like the swimming...

http://carlzimmer.com/books/parasiterex/index.html

I got Emery this book yesterday, worried that it was really over his head. I had heard Carl Zimmer on This American Life and he told a fascinating tale of parasites and their status as the most successful organisms on the planet. I thought Em would be interested in this but once I bought the book I wasn't sure I'd made a good choice. It was long and had no pictures and was not a book I felt I could read, let alone my 10-year-old.

I gave him the book after school and he began reading it immediately. He read the first third of it last night. Astonishing.

Die with a T

I am in the third week of a food plan... I'm doing Jenny Craig again. I actually haven't gained any weight since I did the program 10 years ago. When I weighed in I weighed exactly my former goal weight. The problem is that over those years I had lost a little more and this winter I put it back on. I think my body just looks different at this weight today than it did 10 years ago. And I'm unhappy with it.

I've lost about 2.5 lbs which isn't much but I don't have that much to lose. Being back on JC reminds me of how I ate when I first got out of treatment. Strict portion control and small meals followed by light snacks. I don't know why it's so difficult to keep that up except that you sort of have to think about eating all the time and I really hate that. Sometimes I wish that I could just go through the day being fed intravenously and not have to think about it.

I also was drinking alcohol to regularly - a glass of wine here and cocktail there and in the middle of the week as well. Those calories added up quickly. So that was the first thing I did - no more drinking during the week.

I heard an owl!

The other morning I was up very early and I heard an owl hooting...

Alzheimers

I listened to NYC Radiolab's podcast today and it was about how a researcher in language had analyzed Agatha Christie's last 8 books and detected the possibility that she had Alzheimer's. The deduction was based on how much of her vocabulary she lost (20-25%) and how often she used the word thing, including something, nothing, everything, anything -- in other words, she became less specific and it appeared that this could be an early indicator for Alzheimer's.

I had to stop listening to the podcast. The other day I was searching for the word sentimental and could not come up with it. As I listened to this professor talk about how Christie was losing it, losing herself, losing her mind, I thought about analyzing my blogs and emails from the last 5 years... If they could tell a tale, would I want to know?

Decidedly not. What would be the point? I think it would just make me panic. My mother always says that being a mother and working full time and all that is what makes you unable to come up with the word sentimental when you need it. Just in case, I have started working the crossword puzzle again after going years without it. I think I need to keep sharp.

Fun Times

Had such a fun weekend with Jeff and Ken. Now we must get to DC. Jeff convinced the children that he works for the government and he's going to have to do some pretty fancy footwork to entertain them when we visit our nation's capitol.

For dinner on Saturday night we had Leigh and Alex, Gigi and Charles Henry, Scott, Erick and Amber, Jeff, Ken, Paige, Doug... All the hee haw gang. J&K made a WONderful risotto. Fabulous.

This weekend for Mother's Day we are headed to the Staddon-Smiths where we'll get to see Colin and Rosemary, Alex's parents.