EH.

So much to say and so little time to say it in.

From our last visit we successfully made it to Texas and back. We are officially "Texans" I guess if you call having a drivers license from that state making you officially anything. Larry in true historic fashion got super ill the first 3 days of the trip so he actually let me do most of the driving. Larry generally doesn't take vacation because he usually get sick to make for a terrible time.

Our first planned vacation to meet my grandparents? He was hospitalized with Ehrlichiosis. Went to Florida the next week taking Doxycycline and couldn't go in the sun.  Honeymoon? Bad sinus infection and he spend our cruise on Doxycycline... I forget the rest but the pattern has been set. The one outlayer was the Idaho trip. Maybe because he had plenty of time and we had nothing planned and nothing to loose that one worked out.

Anyway. We took the long way there so we could drive the old Route 66 and show the kids the real places the movie Cars was based on. Plus there are volcanoes along the way. And lately I've thought volcanoes are cool. From a distance, tho. not really keen on living on top of one of the "maybe they're not really dormant afterall" Salton Sea ones here or that one they say is a supervolcano under yellowstone. Although if I'm going to go, going fast and relatively pain free is pretty high on my list. I'm just not convinced that death by volcano would fall under pain free. Don't worry I'm not preoccupied with death but it has become one of those things that crosses my mind occasionally the further I get from the birth blip on my theoretical life time line. But much like birth it's not something I think we get a whole lot of say in the matter on.

Anyway, we hiked the Sunset Crater Volcano in New Mexico while Larry napped in the car:

That is a mountain of Geodes. For sale. By the pound. The kids, all 5 of them- had a blast here.

went through the Petrified Forest stopping long enough to become Jr Rangers and use the bathroom twice, and see a beautiful sunset

 picked up some spray paint for the Cadillacs buried in the dirt in Amarillo

 and hoped there were bathrooms at the enormous cross and stations of the cross in Groom Texas.

We studied the Missions this year with the 4th graders. Surprising to me, I didn't realize that when you don't grow up catholic that the Crucifix is pretty shocking. Especially life size ones.

We turned around to take pictures of signs in podunk areas with 3 stop lights, a town speed limit of 35 and exactly 1 dairy Queen and 1 Sonic. I think you can have a population of 15 in a town and still have a DQ and Sonic in Texas. And a feed store and a gas station that is priced higher than even California.
Pictures will be uploaded.  Pictures are worth 10000 words, ya know. And about 90 GB, apparently.

Gotta love the blue correction spray paint.

 As Larry says "NO EARL! that's not how you spell "For Sale, I"ll fix it! see - that's a 4!"

And he wonders why I don't jump at the chance to move here. The kids have to date at some point, ya know?



















If you're looking at these pictures and thinking "boy, they look cold!" I can assure you, yes. It was cold. Living in paradise we forget that the rest of the world sometimes has winter. And rain. So that was snow in the background and rain you see. Because I checked the weather in Dallas and said ;'hey, it's going to be the same as here' and forgot to check all the places we were going to travel inbetween. Besides. We're San Diegans now (sorta. I mean are Texans, too, and Connecticutans.. now I'm just making stuff up..) and we think anything below 65 degrees requires a winter coat. And I didn't pack them. Because it was May. really, mother Nature, May isn't winter south of Wisconsin normally. I just forgot we don't define winter like Wisconsin would.

We were able to spend time with by brother, his wife and their kids. Who 2 of kids glommed onto. Kayla while we always assumed was a great deal like Gracie in fact IS a great deal like Gracie, so much so that Larry took to calling them "peas" as in "2 peas in a pod" 'Jemiah' and JM when in full motion were 2 blurs of equal size and intense physical energy.  And while 1 Jm gives me pause to reconsider all things of potential weapon and destruction, 2 of them gave me greater pause. My brother, however, more tapped into his testosterone decided to give them real swords when they were using less appropriate things like sticks and brooms to play swords with. Which pretty much highlights our differences. I'd let them keep the broom and add a dust pan to it, thus changing their task but leaving their fake weapon. He supplies them with the actual supplies to do the task they actually wanted to do thus sealing his fate as cool uncle and dad.

One of what could have been the highlights of our trip was a trip to 6 flags. For homeschool day.
The poetic irony that I took my kids from their public schools to visit a different state and go to their homeschool day and bookfair isn't lost on me. But Texas is a BIG state and boy do they have homeschoolers. They rent the entire 6 flags. This could have been awesome. And was surprisingly crowded.
But the problem developed that it was raining. Apparently if there is lightening within 10 miles of texas they shut down the rides. or at least the outdoor metal ones. Which is like all of them, ya know? so they got to go one 2 rides before we were drenched to the bone, cold and hungry. We went to their Van and the kids camped out in the middle eating our packed lunches and debating if it was worth going back in. The Texas relatives went in to attend to getting their season passes while we in the van decided 'ya know, there is a 6 flags in California.... and even our kids decided 'yeah, standing in the rain for the rides to be reopened doesn't really sound like fun' It was unique and a memorable experience. 

The other part of the trip that was a bit unnerving was the weather. Knowing that we visited the east coast and brought down both an earthquake and hurricane with us, everytime the sky there got erie dark I couldn't help but worry 'what if there is a tornado' We didn't see one, gratefully so perhaps Texas wasn't sending us a 'go away' message quite like CT was.

We also got to visit dear friends in west Texas and were able to put a real live picture with the mental image I have of what west Texas meant. A kindred sister I miss living near, it was great to catch up.

Missing were other friends from close to our route that we didn't have a chance to see. Hoping there will be a next time and we'll have new opportunities in the future.

One of those days

Where if I was writing a book I'd fill a chapter or two. Entirely with work stuff. Or 90% of work stuff.

The stuff you don't see in private practice or learn about at school.

Like a person whose blood glucose is so high our meter reads "hi" to which both doctors I asked about it quipped "did you say hi back?" No, dammit. I didn't. And oh, btw the meter range is to 700. So 20 units of humalog and 30 minute later it finally comes to a level of 600 which the meter can read. And then the guy suddenly perks up and wants to go on his way, thank you very much. While I was all for calling the taxi or ambulance to allow an emergency room to manage my friend here. The doc didn't blink and eye. Oh yeah- and remember those guidelines about I'm going to get graded on my patient's HgbA1c? Taking bets this guys will be by highest yet. And not sure why his failure to take his insulin to be my responsibility. But
I lean libertarian and live and work in a democrat ruled bubble.  Insulin? 'yeah. I'm supposed to be on it'. Did you take it? 'well, no.'  When was your last dose? 'awh, gee, maybe 3 weeks ago? It's been  a while.' Oh yeah, and he's lost 45 lbs the past month. or more. And was in the ER "not too long ago" in DKA. still wearing his bracelet from that visit.

Nice guy, tho. More than I can say for some others.

And so I get home with 12 charts to finish and the remote access gives me communication failure errors. alot. and crashes. Reboot, relog on. same thing. Which means..... I get to finish tomorrow after another day of insanity. literal insanity. for both the patients and me, I think.

School news- This week as JMs school music performance. as kinder/first graders they play the sticks, drums, triangles and cymbals.  JM is in a class or rambunctious boys and they got.... you got it.... the sticks. And I cracked up watching his teacher about have a stroke trying to get them to hold the sticks on their shoulders and not hitting each other with them. 

I am their "garden parent" and I"m getting to know them. they're 70% boys. And their teacher doesn't have the experience harnessing that sort of energy. And I have get to harness and contain all of them at once, either. At least not doing anything learning based. They play a mean duck duck goose.

The garden took over the past week of my life. Not MY garden in my backyard. But the school garden. I was sucked into being on the garden committee by being the only person personally known by the rest of the garden committee to actually have a garden.

If you can imagine 4 people going on pintrest and pinning about 3 dozen great ideas and then forming a committee to try to do all these great ideas before trying them at home... that's the garden.  I'm not on pintrests. I don't have that kind of time. But I've found myself landing there when doing other searches and some of the ideas have been great and others are 'uh, did you try that? yeah? and the result sucks? I'm so not surprised. Most of everything I've tried from there was a catastrophic failure."  They had meetings ad nausem to talk about all their great ideas. I had a conflict with each of them except for the one on my birthday which I decided to take a long bubble bath instead. But things like drainage, slope, you mean I have to water these things? all the time? what do you mean full sun isn't great for all plants? ARGH. And like a train wreck that might be able to be prevented I've been there trying to fix the tracks so that train doesn't take out innocent bystanders.

So aside from trying to fix irrigation issues and slope issues and overall garden issues I also got to be the classroom parent for Sonia's and Jon's class. (who after a few days of my being there, they call him jonmichael now, sometimes.) And while other class garden parents had to talk to garden head cheese to ask her for plants ahead of time I could go to my piles of sprouted seeds, other seeds, plants I needed to thin and plant 2 whole garden boxes easily. AND we had the only strawberry plants. Which seems to draw nearly everyone's attention. I mean how exciting to carrots and signs saying there are seeds there when there are pink and red strawberries begging all adult and kids to pick them.   Today was the big garden ribbon cutting ceremony and the reason I've got sunburn and blisters from getting the dang thing ready. And today I worked all day but Sonia was appointed by her teacher to be their garden parent class liason. She's a walking talking encyclopedia of gardening knowledge so she schooled the school board and the benefactors on all things related to her class's square foot garden. She also informed me that my handwriting on the "CUKES" stick looked like "cakes" and that "nonone knew that cukes stood for cucucumber" which might not be 100% true. But if that is true - is that a local new england thing or did I pick that up somewhere else along my life? The odd regional differences sometime amuse me. Like this week in the garden and I was talking to someone who when to Boston College and someone else pipes in about a "great restaurant" I'd like. They have philly cheesesteak. huh? Philly in that means philladelphia. Not Boston. And I said, yeah, I'm sure it's great but I can't say I'm a big cheesesteak fan. Nor am I a big fan of lousy geography skills or stereotyping people based on one food.  I mean really, San Diego you want people to ask you everytime you travel if you tried the san diego style street taco restaurant in thier po dunk town? because we live in street taco heaven here and even here you have great and less than great street tacos. And THEY say they're Tiajuana style. 

I think I followed that squirrel down the rabbit trail a bit too far tonight. Sorry.

In theory this coming week we'll be visiting Texas and becoming official Texans. This sounds kinda exciting.
In actuality, Larry doesn't have that leave officially approved, by the dozens that need to approve this but the absolute earliest we could leave is sunday. We'll be missing the first week of CST testing. So sad, I know.

I took the truck in to make sure that it could actually make it across the desert of west Texas and while it was pouring antifreeze into the driveway, it's been behaving perfectly fine since I brought it to the mechanic. We will see. I should probably make sure all our AAA cards are up to date and unexpired, tho. I love our mechanic. His advice - it's working, leave it alone, travel with gallons of water and antifreeze. And he wouldn't charge me because he didn't think it needed fixing. Time will tell on that.