General Updates

Shortly after rocking out to Patti Smith, I was hit by a stomach flu. However, I am happy to report that I recovered quickly, and it also gave me a window of opportunity to wean myself off coffee. I love coffee. I love cupping my hands around a warm mug during winter morning breakfast. I love an after dinner espresso. I love smelling coffee beans right after they are ground. And one of the few pleasures of teaching early morning algebra classes, is doing so while sipping a travel mug of coffee. Even though it's usually the cheap Maxwell House stuff my coffee club friends at school bring in and not the fancy, single origin, fair trade stuff my dad and M are into.

Last week I had my first acupuncture appointment, and I was given a diet designed to cure my "dampness". Chinese medicine says that I have an imbalance in my yin and my yang and a dampness in my organs. Especially my spleen. So all week, I ate a lot of gluten-free porridge, blueberries, and root vegetables. I cut out the dairy and the coffee. I took some probiotics, and applied castor oil packs. No tropical fruits. No alcohol.

Sigh.

I guess I feel better. I always feel better on Fridays, though.

So, in toddler news, Laurel had several playdates this week. The most interesting thing about the toddler crew these days is that they all talk in mostly comprehensible ways, and they play together. Well, mostly they fight about sharing things. But sometimes they play together. While M and I were down with the stomach flu last weekend, she watched approximately 24 hours of television. One of the DVDs we got from the library was The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog - which I personally enjoyed as an adult, and found much less annoying than Thomas the Train. Anyway, there was a line from the book, "I have a question. I have never eaten a hot dog before."

Laurel must have said this to us a thousand times this week. And before we realized she was quoting the movie, we kept saying "That's not a question!" or "You've never eaten a hot dog because you are a vegetarian!"

One of the most delightful parts of the day is sitting down with M after Laurel goes to bed and sharing our stories about what she said to us. He told me that this week she wanted to talk about trees and roots. She spent a lot of time with me saying "nice to see you, Mama" and shaking my hand.

And in news about M, well, he just discovered how to make microwave popcorn by just putting regular old kernels into a paper bag and sticking it in the microwave. It turns out that all the crap they put in commercial microwave popcorn really is just crap and is not needed to make the corn pop. If you put oil on, it kind of burns. Thanks a lot, Alton Brown.

So, life is good, same as ever.