Under the Influence

I was at a bible study the other night watching a video discussion about the early church. One of the people in the video made a reference to "the One" and then said she felt like she was in the Matrix. I was the only one who laughed. And if you're familiar with my laugh, you know it's rather loud and braying. One of the moderators in the bible study made it worse by making a reference to the Borg. Yet again, I was the only one who found that amusing (and loudly). As I was driving home, I began to wonder what had happened to bring me over into the geek side.

Before I met Jeff, I did toe the geek line a good bit. I've always loved to read, and I am intrigued by science fiction (but I don't read science fiction, don't ask it just works out that way). I mean, I'd seen Star Wars and Star Trek, and enjoyed them, but I never actively sought out those movies or shows. I've been a fan of Harry Potter since the third book (my all time favorite) was published. I enjoyed 'The Hobbit' which I read in middle school. All the elements were there, but it just wasn't quite enough to push me over to the other side.

Then enter Jeff. He was 25 when we met and I was 22. He definitely was in need of refinement. He once wiped his nose on a linen napkin at a restaurant. We've had many discussions about that incident since, but he still doesn't quite get it. He's  becoming more social since my intervention. I introduced him to the 'Inheritance Cycle' by Christopher Paolini (I still have not read that beast of a fourth book). I also introduced him to the 'Hunger Games'. But that pretty much ends my influence on him.

Jeff has way more influence on my tastes. He introduced me to South Park, which I love, and chicken wings, which I also love. Some of my favorite dates with him were at his house eating wings and watching South Park. Jeff also managed to work in a lot more Star Wars. I'd seen the original trilogy, but only the first of the new trilogy (it turned me off of the new trilogy definitely the worst of the 6, in my opinion). He also showed me the remaining two Lord of the Rings*. I'd only seen the first in the theater and read the first book,  I became uninterested after Gandalf died. And he also introduced me to the Matrix, which I like, but is probably my least favorite of them all. I suppose I am now a geek by marriage.

The other night I asked Jeff if we would be considered 'born again trekkies'. We both watched it  (mostly the next generation) here and there growing up. The summer I was pregnant with Doug the first movie of the re-boot came out and we very much enjoyed it. Last summer we re-watched the movie, and afterwards I said that we should add the next generation shows to our dvr. We forgot about it and by the time we did it, it wasn't available on any of our cable channels. We eventually got a Roku (for internet streaming) and we've been watching the show free from Amazon Prime. We're going episode by episode, season by season. We're almost through the second season.

Doug is our little geekling in training. He is very much into Star Wars. He does a mean Chewie and Vader impression. During the Super Bowl, a trailer for the next Star Trek movie was aired. In the trailer, it was quiet for a moment, except for the beeping of the Enterprise. Doug whipped around, "RD2??!". We told him, no, that it was Star Trek and not Star Wars, and please don't ever mix them up again. Doug hasn't seen Star Trek, but he knows we watch it and has asked to watch it too. The geek is strong with this one. I won't even try to influence it out of him.

This is the back of my car. 

*Watching 'The Lord of the Rings' with Jeff is a serious time commitment. He has the extended edition of each movie, so it takes about 12 hours if you want to watch them all. In fact, I was forbidden to buy 'The Hobbit' when it came out on dvd, because Jeff had heard that there was going to be an extended release coming out before Christmas. 

It's the Law

I thought our next science observation should be about gravity, after all, Doug's fallen victim to it many times. I thought that the most fun way to observe gravity in action would be with water balloons. It was decently warm enough over the weekend, so we gave it a go.

Doug's outfit is a bit eclectic here. He wanted to wear his new crocs and his sunglasses with stars on them. It's very Elton John.

We did experience an odd problem with the water balloons. Some of them were very resistant to breaking. We didn't use actual water balloons, in my experience, the mouths of the balloons are too narrow. Anyway, we really had to abuse some of them to get them to break. Jeff tossed some of them twenty fear in the air only to have them bounce when they landed. They were all over filled with water too.

Doug discovered than the concrete patio under the deck was a good place to burst the balloons.

Doug had a blast. He keeps asking about doing it again. This may become a favorite activity with him! I'm not 100% sure how much he learned about gravity, but it was fun.

Ebb & Flow

The past eight or nine months of being off of my fibromyalgia medications has been a learning experience. I'm still feeling around for my limits of pain and fatigue and unfortunately, that changes throughout the month making things more complicated than need be. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely good reasons for me to be off my medication. Overall, I'm less fatigued than I had been. I've had a decrease of other side effects as well. It has just taken me a long time to get to know my fibro in this new situation.

Every so often, I go through this internal struggle with my illness. I begin to wonder if I do actually need to limit my activities because of the fibro. I wonder if it's actually the illness that is limiting or it's my own perception of the illness. Basically I wonder, am I lazy or am I sick? And so then I go and do something not really wise.

Last week, I skipped my crash day. It had been a really busy weekend and I rested a bit that Monday, but I thought that Tuesday I could just get up and get on with the things I'd like to do that day. That Tuesday I was fine. Unfortunately, that Wednesday, Jeff's car became compromised and it was old enough and broken enough that it was better to replace it than fix it. Which led to one very long day at a car dealership buying a car and then another long afternoon the next day bringing in our old car to trade in. Basically, I probably would have been okay that week, if not for the emergency. But this week I'm still trying to pick myself back up after a rather long last week, and I wonder how things would have turned out if I'd taken my day to rest.

So that's sort of where my mind set has been the past several weeks. I am tired. I do rationally know that it's due to being ill, but it's still difficult to really wrap my head around that. I am excited and a bit nervous about some new responsibilities and activities I've taken on and will be taking on. Some of them will be short term and other a bit long term. I love being able to get out of the house and interact with other people. I miss trouble shooting, and I'm definitely getting the ability to do it now!

So for now I've decided I'm going to be cautious, but still try new things. Push my limits a bit here and there. Just keep swimming!

Tasty Alphabet

I was trying to think of a way to make Doug's lunch more appealing today. This week we have sliced turkey for lunch, and while Doug will eat turkey Lunchables until the cows come home, he won't eat the deli turkey we get. I started out by thinking I might just cut the turkey into little circles for him (like the Lunchable) but then I thought if I was going to go to the trouble that I'd do our letter of the week.

I was a bit doubtful of using plastic cookie cutters on the meat but it worked out quite well. I also did a few slices of American cheese. Doug was absolutely delighted. My only regret is that I didn't think of this sooner! I am definitely going to incorporate this on the rest of our letters!

Friday Fun

It's been a long week around here. Jeff's car rather unexpectedly needed to be replaced. The air compressor stopped working just in time for our 90 degree weather. We were hoping it was a simple cheap fix, but it was not and the car was 13 years old with over 130 k miles on it. Unfortunately I didn't leave extra padding in my week for 'semi emergency car buying' and I'm kinda pooped. But it all ended well and we have a nice actually new car. Due to the long week and a rainy morning, I decided that Doug and I would make brownies. Doug rather enthusiastically agreed. 

Chef Doug suggested putting mini chocolate chips in the brownies. I'm looking forward to the results.


While we were making brownies, Doug's new car-seat arrived. Since Jeff now has a reliable car, we thought we'd probably take it out as a family now and then and we didn't want to have to schlep the car seat back and forth.  I found a model that can become a booster seat in a few years, I thought it was a decent idea.

As you can see, Sir approves of his new car seat. 

Sir is also very excited about the box it came in.

And like many new home owners, he couldn't wait to make modifications on it.

Happy Friday! 

Have You Seen This Baby?

This baby used to live with us: 

I'm not sure what happened to him. I think this child may have eaten him:

Happy third birthday to my baby!

Making it Count

I was struggling trying to figure out how and when to introduce the concept of zero to Doug. I thought that if I introduced zero first and he got a number surprise box full of nothing that it would seriously piss Doug off and put him off the number surprise box. I thought that if I delayed its introduction too long, that Doug wouldn't understand that it goes before all the other numbers he knows and not after and that it is indeed less.

 Then one afternoon, it hit me. A number line! I thought about how I wanted to construct it and then I fired up my trusty ole laminator. I used card stock and printed up numbers 0-20 using a rainbow of colors. After I laminated them, I cut them out and attached some velcro using the sides of the laminated pages as tabs:

A bit hard to see due to the camera flash, but nap time seems like its going to be cut short, so I don't have time to re-shoot. There are two tabs on the front side and two on the back side. They all fit very nicely together. I started with the 0-20, but we can add more, all the way up to 100, as we learn along.

Evidently the 20 is just off to the side of the frame, but you get the idea.

Doug loves playing with it. It becomes a roller coaster, a parking lot or train tracks depending on what he wants to drive over it. 

I like to play a number game with it. I put out the number line and we count up and touch each of the numbers as we assemble it, taking special care to point out our number of the week. Once it's all together I ask Doug to bring me the week's number in certain objects.

For example, I asked him to bring me eight cars:

And then eight fish:

And then we ran out of Disney/Pixar toys, but you get the idea. We never put anything on the 0 obviously, but we talk about how it's a place holder. I know that Doug doesn't grasp that concept quite yet, but I've begun to plant the seed. I plan to cover the number zero after we do the number ten.
Happy counting!