Out of the Mouths of Babes

It's been so long since I've posted anything, I thought I'd kick start things with some quotes from some of my favorite kiddos.

These are things that my niece, nephews, and my oldest child have said and done throughout the past few years, that we thought were funny enough to write down at the time.

Stay tuned for more from the younger ones as they start talking more. Especially the 2014 babies, Luke, Nate, and Ellie. I have a feeling they are going to have a lot to say. :)

Jack, when asked how many children he was going to have: "I don't know how many babies I will have, but I am marrying with Katie and Shane."

From Em: Oliver told me that he was going to make me decaf pears with cocoa so I could be wide asleep and not get cold.

While taking a walk with Clare and Eli, Clare wanted to push the stroller. She looked up at me and said, "Katie, aren't you proud that I can push your big chubby baby up this hill?"

Clare, after referring to Eli as a chubby baby: “I used to think that chubby meant cute and sweet. Now I know that it just means really fat.”

Oliver: “We don’t eat poop… just hot dogs.”

April: “Clare, why do you have paint on your face?”
Clare: “Because I'm an artist. And artists get dirty.”

Eli: “More cheese”
Me (in an attempt to correct him): “Please may I have more cheese?”
Eli: “Okay!”

From mom: Oliver just opened the dishwasher and said he needs to fold dishes.

After a conversation with Pop about the scars on his knees, Clare reported to Gram that he had had surgery. Gram asked her if she knew what surgery was, to which she promptly and confidently replied, "yep! That's when they ga-pow ya!"

Mom brought home Chinese food one day after work. When she walked in with dinner, Sam came running up and asked if she had "the China food." A few minutes later, with a very concerned look on his face, Sam said, "Gram, did you miss me?" Assuming that he meant did she miss him while she was at work, she said, "I sure did, buddy!" He responded, "Should you have gone all the way to China, then?"

Eli (holding flash card): “What’s this?”
Me: “An apple.”
Eli: “There ya go!”

Me: "Sam, what's on your finger?"
Sam: "Dirt. I'm going to eat it."
Me: "You're not supposed to eat dirt."
Sam: "It's ok. I'm pretending it's something I can eat... like a booger."

Oliver: “Sleep will feel me better.”

Sam: "Is Nate a boy's name?"
April: "Yes."
Sam (looking confused): "Is Nate a boy?"
April: "Yes, he is."
Sam (with a sigh): "Okay. I'll let Katie know."

From Em: Oliver told me yesterday after his nap that he “fell awake.”

Me: “Eli, where is the grey block?”
Eli: “Right there!” (holding grey block)
Me: “Good job! That’s grey!”
Eli (pointing to my hair): “Hair?” :\

I'm back...

Well, I know it's been about 9 months since I've written anything for this blog. I was able to get some posts cranked out at the last minute before leaving for Basic Training, and get those auto-published while I was in BMT, but I haven't done anything since then. I'm back now, though, so please feel free to breathe that sigh of relief and return, finally, to getting a full night's rest.

I have an entire folder full of "in progress" blogs that are in various stages of development. So I'm going to try to finish some of those, and then return to creating new ones. Of course, they're all new to you, the reader, so I basically just wasted time and energy writing this entire paragraph.

Aren't you glad I'm back? :)

Sleep... it's not for the undetermined

I recently started working a different (very early morning) shift at work. This past Sunday evening I was especially tired, so I decided to call it a day around 7:00 pm. I did my best to block out every trace of sunlight in my room, turned on my sound machine, attempted to read for a little while (about five minutes), then I was out. For approximately 15 minutes. I was jarred back into consciousness by the thunderous explosion of bass notes blasting through my bedroom wall from my neighbor’s apartment…

I immediately recognized the song (“Save the Last Dance For Me”), which is a song I actually like. But never before have I noticed that it has a very pronounced bass part – very cool I’m sure, to someone who is fully awake and alert, but quite maddening to someone who has just been jolted awake by it. This song was followed by several others, and it was during the second song that I realized my poor neighbor must have a hearing problem, because he KEPT TURNING THE VOLUME UP. Seriously, it was as if I had crawled onto the stage of a rock concert, laid my pillow on the bass player’s amp, and decided to try to catch some ZZZs.

Allow me to pause here and briefly describe the inverse correlation between my level of fatigue and my level of patience. I go through stages of irritability when suffering from sleep deprivation. With the first stage (mild drowsiness) I am able to remain fairly pleasant, with only occasional displays of annoyance. Think of a child, perhaps 8 years old, for this one.

The next level (moderate sleepiness) brings out some more, um… colorful…. aspects of my personality. I begin to zone out for longer periods of time, it becomes difficult to maintain focus on anything non-shiny for more than 5 seconds, my irritability seems to be triggered not necessarily more frequently, but more unpredictably. And my attempts at coherent conversation become strained, at best. Here, imagine a 3-year old child who missed a nap or two.

Extreme exhaustion is the final stage, and with it comes such symptoms as a blank stare, a complete inability to focus on anything (shiny or otherwise), and you can just forget about exchanging any type of intelligent dialogue with me. Also, there may be occasional temper tantrums, but only if something goes drastically wrong. And by “something going drastically wrong,” I am basically referring to any and all occasions in which I am forced to do something I don’t feel like doing (obeying traffic laws, standing in line anywhere, or behaving like a civil human being). I cannot provide a phase of life with which to compare this stage. This one may very well be unique to me. But maybe think along the lines of Jekyll and Hyde.

Anyway, I digress (lack of ability to focus… refer back to stage 2 if you have already forgotten).

Now, by nature, I am not a confrontational person. And I really don’t get angry often. Even if I do get angry I’m not going to be “in-your-face” about it. So when the bass notes began thumping through the wall directly into my head, my initial reaction was to calmly adjust the volume on my sound machine ever so slightly. As I should have expected, this did not solve anything other than removing my ability to recognize the songs being played…. thus leaving me to guess what the song was, based on the snatches of music I was able to discern above the now steady “rain” falling 2 feet from my head. So for the next few minutes all of my quickly draining energy was being focused on NOT guessing what song was playing.

Realizing this was going to last for a while, I jumped out of bed, angrily turned the sound machine volume up to the highest volume (labeled “deafening” on the side of the machine), flung myself back into the bed with a huff, and buried my head between my pillows. So my plan to quickly fall asleep to the gentle sound of raindrops pattering to the ground were definitely shot. Instead, I FINALLY drifted off despite experiencing what I imagine I would feel like if I were being smothered to death in the middle of a rock concert underneath Niagara Falls.

The Elevator

Today I was sitting at my desk at work, and was struck with one of my frequent cravings – I needed some chocolate covered pretzels and, more importantly, some caffeine. So I ventured down to the company store on the ground floor, where I purchased these tasty treats. Already with a little extra pep in my step at the mere thought of getting some caffeine into my system, I struck up a conversation with a woman walking in front of me. She was not really walking, actually, but hobbling on crutches, with a cast on her foot. We were discussing the fact that we both had broken only one bone in our lives –the left ankle. As we approached the elevator, we were discussing the causes of the aforementioned broken bone (mine was a street hockey injury). We were joined by a third woman, we all entered the elevator, and each of us pressed the buttons for our respective floors. By this point we were discussing (don’t ever do this) how we tend to have a propensity for attracting accidents and misfortune.

No sooner had the elevator doors closed and the elevator started rising towards the first floor, when it suddenly came to a halt with a quite disconcerting grinding sound. So here we were, caught between the ground floor and the first. Two things immediately popped into my head. First, I managed to grab the pager off of my desk before I dashed from my desk in a moment of chocolate-craving madness. But had I grabbed my cell phone? Nope. I was stuck in an elevator with a pager. Fat lot of good that would do me. I suppose someone could have started paging me once they realized I was missing. But, really, what are the odds that they’d wander around the entire building listening for the beeping? No one in my group cares about me that much. My second thought was, after accepting that I would not be able to page my way free, that it was very fortunate indeed that I had just purchased my pretzels and Dr. Pepper. With such nourishing sustenance clutched in my hands, this meant I would survive longer than the others. Now I’m not naïve, I knew a struggle would ensue once they realized I was the only one with food. But I had already begun sizing them up, and I knew I could have taken either one of them had they attempted to snatch my snack from my desperate, life-threatened clutch.

While I was pondering these thoughts, the other two were beginning to look slightly distressed, and had begun (again, don’t ever do this) pressing random buttons within the elevator. Had I not been so well-prepared for just such an emergency with my pretzels, soft drink, and pager, I may have joined them. I had a fleeting curiosity about what it would be like to plummet back down to the lower level of the building, enclosed within a steel box. But it was very fleeting. As they continued to frantically press all of the buttons AT THE SAME TIME, I had already drifted back off into my dream world, where I was reflecting upon the life I had lived so far, and wondering if I had just bought my last snack. Well, evidently I was meant to eat more chocolate covered pretzels after these, because finally we felt the elevator rise a little more, then stop, and the doors opened.

As we exited the death trap, we each breathed a sigh of relief and laughingly made a comment about being glad we made it off that thing alive. The crutch-aided woman was already on her floor, so she hobbled off to wherever she was going. I immediately headed for the stairs. I glanced behind me and the third woman had just pressed the “Up” button outside of the elevators. The doors opened to the elevator right next to the one we had just been stuck on, and SHE GOT RIGHT IN IT. As I slowly began my ascent up the stairs to my desk, munching on my cherished pretzels, I began pondering the theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest.
There just might be something to those after all…

Lime

With spring in the air, I was inspired to plant some flowers a few weeks ago. Because I’m in an apartment, this means I planted them in pots and put some outside and some inside… I went to Lowe’s and picked out several different varieties, came home and decided exactly how I wanted to arrange them. Then I planted them, watered them, and placed each pot in its assigned spot. They are still beautiful, and are thriving. I’m only including this information so that everyone who reads the following does not think I’m completely incompetent when it comes to plants.

My grandmother has the greenest thumb of anyone I’ve ever known. All she has to do is look at a flower that is on its last leg, and it will miraculously spring to life. My mother, on the other hand, seems to have a black thumb, if there is such a thing. Horticulturally handicapped, if you will. Yes, I’m pretty sure I just made that word up since spell check is screaming at me to change it. But I’m not going to because I like it. Anyway, if there is a plant within twenty feet of my mom, it will keel over and die. One time when she was at my house, I spotted one of my plants starting to look very sick indeed, and I think I saw a tiny little white flag being raised. I had to hurry mom out of the house before it was too late. Haha, not really. I just want to make the point that flowers react very differently to my mom than they do to my grandmom. And since I have both of their blood running through my veins, I knew it’d be a toss-up as to which one I’d be like.

A few months ago, I had been up at my parent’s house and was getting ready to leave, when I noticed a sad little pot of ivy sulking in the corner near the front door. If plants could talk, this one would have screamed, “For the love of Gardenia, take me with you!!” So I did. I asked mom if I could take it and try to revive it. She said sure, since she was only going to throw it away anyway. I was determined to bring this thing back to a healthful state. I put it in its own special place in my dining room, and kept a constant vigil of its color, the level of sunlight, and the soil hydration. A day or so later, I decided it’d be a good idea to look online for tips on how to care for ivy, because I had no idea what type of environment, amount of water, etc it needed. So I checked online and found an article with a lot of helpful tips. One tip was that people tend to over-water their ivy, and it gets moldy. Noted. Ivy doesn’t need much sunlight. Got it. Make sure it is in an appropriate container to allow for adequate soil drainage. Check. Then I read the following: “Ivy prefers slightly alkaline soil. If your soil is acidic, add lime.” Aha! Acidic soil! That had to be the culprit.

Now, I’m going to pause here for a moment and explain to those who may not already know – I am a very literal person. Very. Whether it’s a good or bad thing, that’s what I am. So, when I see an article that says “add lime” I’m going to add lime. Well, apparently the person who wrote this article was referring to agricultural lime, which is a compound of calcium and magnesium, used to raise the pH of soil. But when I read lime, my thoughts went straight to the little green fruit.

I needed to go to the grocery store that evening anyway, so I went ahead and picked up two or three limes. I came home from the store, humming “put the lime in the coconut”, and proceeded to squeeze the juice from one of the limes right into the soil where my ivy sat silently screaming. Very pleased with myself and my diligent research and follow through, I sat back knowing the ivy would perk right up within a few days. The next day my mom came over to the apartment, and I very proudly told her the whole story, and explained that I expected to see a rapid transformation within the next few days. To her credit, she managed to keep a straight face during my story. Then she asked me, “When you say you added lime to the soil, what exactly do you mean?” I told her I cut a lime in half, and then squeezed the juice out of it, into the soil. Again, to her credit, she didn’t laugh in my face immediately.

But she has not let me live this one down, and I no longer have any room to talk about the fact that she kills plants. Because I not only kill them, I managed to devise a plan to torture and kill my plant. The ivy actually did start doing okay over the next several days. But then I guess it soaked up so much acid from the lime juice that it took a turn for the worse and deteriorated at an alarmingly rapid rate, then finally croaked.

I’m hoping at least some of my grandmom’s ability was passed along to me, and that the ivy incident was a one-time thing. But I won’t quit my day job, just in case.

Running

This week I began my own “training” program, designed by yours truly, to get myself in better shape. I was looking at the requirements for the physical fitness test for Air Force Officer Training School. Basically they require each person to be able to do a certain number of pushups in one minute, a certain number of situps in one minute, and be able to run a mile and a half in a specific amount of time. Pushups don’t really give me any problems, but I’m going to slowly build up to being able to do more. I could do situps all day long, so no problem there. But running. Ah, running. So begins my next post.

First, some background: For those who know me even fairly well, think back to a time when you saw me running… or doing anything really quickly, for that matter. I myself have recently tried to pinpoint exactly what type of occasion or event would inspire me to run from point A to point B. The only thing I have been able to come up with is – if someone or something is chasing me with the intent to kill. Short of that, I will only be inspired to walk briskly.

So this week I left the familiarity and comfort of my old friend the elliptical trainer. I have spent many hours on that machine, while reading a book, listening to my iPod, watching TV, juggling knives, you name it. On this machine you can do whatever you want while you’re exercising, which means you distract yourself from any discomfort you may be experiencing. You can do these things because you determine your own speed, and it’s pretty impossible to fall off unless you’re trying to do something stupid. Today, since I am trying to get in better shape, and increase (actually, develop is a more accurate word here) my ability to run for a respectable amount of time, I did not get on the elliptical trainer.

Instead, I walked right past it, straight to the dreaded machine…. where trepidation and angst hover like a looming thundercloud. The last machine in that place that I would ever get on willingly. That’s right. The treadmill. So here is the first of my two questions: Why would anyone voluntarily throw themselves onto this racing conveyer belt of death?? I don’t think people who run on treadmills are running for enjoyment, relaxation, or even for the health benefits. They are running for their lives. Because if they stop running, they will be forcefully hurled into the wall that is always conveniently located fifteen inches behind the treadmill. I think anytime you see someone on a treadmill, either it’s their first time, and they have not yet figured out how to turn the thing off… Or it’s someone who has conquered the fear of being pitched directly into a solid concrete wall, and they get some sort of thrill from achieving this victory on a regular basis. Whatever. More power to them.

The second question I have is this: Whether on a treadmill or not - why in the world do people enjoy running?? I can imagine what might be enjoyable about it. You can clear your head, let your mind wander, and it makes you feel good because it gets your adrenaline going. Well, maybe it’s just because I’m new to it, but when I’m running, my body is screaming at me, “What are you doing??!!! This is not at all pleasant!! In fact, it hurts, and I want to stop NOW!!” And that’s just what I heard during the first 12 seconds or so into my run. I’ve heard runners say that there’s a point in your run that you have to just “push past” in order to keep going. I thought maybe they meant push past some mild discomfort or slight dehydration issues. Apparently they meant you have to push past your legs turning to jelly, your knees buckling, and your poor lungs positively begging for more oxygen. Basically, when you feel your major body systems shutting down, just “push past it.”

So the disdain I already felt towards treadmills has now been coupled with my absolute animosity for running. I managed to stay on that horrible machine for 10 minutes. That’s right. 10 minutes is all I could muster. And of that, only 6 minutes were spent running. I had to alternate 2 minutes walking with 3 minutes running. Pathetic, I know. And when I finally stopped, and stepped back on solid ground, the only thing that kept me from crumbling to the floor in a lifeless heap was the fact that my knees were already so sore they wouldn’t bend enough to allow me such a gracious courtesy.

So that was my day at the gym. Fun times. And I’m looking forward to many more…