befabulo.us

An adult-themed surprise on the Fourth of July.

I'm a DC girl.  I've got high standards for Fourth of July fireworks.  I'm not going to spread my blanket for just anything.  I want to be impressed.  Honestly, going into our first Florida Fourth, I didn't know if our little town could match my big city memories.

Now that the Fourth is safely behind us, I can confidently state that this year's festivities weren't as much fun as those I've enjoyed in the Capital.  No.  It was MORE FUN.  A LOT more fun.

Our town shoots off fireworks over the Gulf, close to the drum circle beach, and from the drum circle beach you can also see the fireworks going off on the beach town a dozen miles north.  Saturday is our normal drum circle night, so we arrived at five bearing our usual supplies: coolers full of drinks and food, the Djembe and assorted percussive devices, glow sticks, sunscreen, and the zebra striped fleece blanket that once was a crib blanket and now lives on as our beach blanket.  I was wearing a brand new white bikini top, because what says God Bless The USA more than a white bikini?  "I'm so glad you wore that," said our Sailor Friend.  He'd brought two huge black lights, connected to a marine battery, and he was clearly looking forward to watching me glow.

We'd arrived at just the right moment.  The beach was already getting crowded, but we lucked into a fantastic parking space.  We nabbed a good spot in the circle, right next to one of the black lights, right in front of a family whose little boy always plays with my son.  My son took off, running and playing with a few other boys in the center of the circle.  As I watched them, I noticed that my son kept spitting.  I pulled him back and sat him down on our blanket, lecturing him about how disgusting and disrespectful it is to spit.  When he went back to play, though, he kept spitting!  I retrieved him again, and this time a little light bulb went off.  I asked him to open his mouth, and there they were -- two new adult teeth, poking up behind his baby incisors.  From the looks of these teeth, they've been there for a while.  I just hadn't noticed.

(For the record, this discovery freaked me out a bit, because surely it cannot be normal to possess two rows of teeth in the bottom of one's mouth.  Google, for once, has been reassuring, and I've learned it's quite normal for adult teeth to come in behind their wiggly baby counterparts.)

Other than the shock of finding extra teeth in my baby's mouth, the evening was just perfect.  Well, there was the bizarre appearance of cops who were threatening to arrest anyone who had glass on the beach (like, um, me.  I had a bottle of shiraz-cabernet in my cooler bag, which I was mixing with Pepsi and drinking out of a travel mug.  I just kept the bag zipped unless I was actually pouring.) but even that was funny.  In DC on the 4th, the place is crawling with cops on Super Heightened Terrorist Alert.  They're worried about dirty bombs and fanatics with shotguns.  Here, the big crime concern is people who've brought bottles of Corona rather than cans of Coors.

Really, it was perfect.  The weather wasn't too hot, it didn't rain, the sunset was gorgeous, the drumming was excellent, and I'd skipped Friday's Pilates class so I wasn't too sore to dance.  And I danced and I danced and I danced, all through the fireworks display and on into the night, while around us kids ran with sparklers and adults lit Roman candles.  The beach was more crowded than I've ever seen it, and yet the crowd had a happy, friendly vibe.  And yes, my white bikini top was extremely impressive in the black light.  I was definitely glowing.

Barometers

I've known for many years that my weight is a consistent barometer of my level of happiness.  When I'm happy, it takes a lot of exercise (and restraint in the cookie aisle) to keep my weight from climbing over 115, which is the most I can weigh and still fit into pants with buttons.  When I'm unhappy -- no matter what flavor of unhappy it is, depressed or stressed or grieving or lonely -- I lose my appetite and my weight dives under 110.  

(Because I know you're wondering, I'm at a very happy place in my life right now, and I'm holding steady at 115.  There are no cookies in the house and I'm exercising regularly and to say that my lifestyle is "active" is an understatement, but I can not for the life of me get my weight to go any lower because I'm just too happy.)

I've just realized, though, that there's another clear barometer in my life.  The more fun I'm having, the dirtier my kitchen floor.

Right now, my kitchen floor says I've been having a lot of fun.

You see, I do my "big" cleaning on the weekends, which I suspect is the norm for working women.  During the week I keep up with dishes and laundry and the battle to keep the Legos contained to my son's room, but if I'm going to vacuum or mop or scrub the tub, it has to be on a Saturday or Sunday.  But that requires me to be home during the day on Saturday and Sunday, and lately, that just hasn't happened.  I've been at the beach or on the boat or hanging out with friends or off on some sort of minor adventure.  The last time I cleaned the kitchen floor was right before my dad arrived for a visit... on June 3.  That's a month, pretty much.  Admittedly, the floor is not college-group-house dirty, no one is sticking to it yet.  I do sweep it every once in a while.  If something spills, I'll wipe it up with a rag, and I make my son pick up any large pieces of food he drops on the floor.  But it has been a long, long time since my floor has gotten some hot lovin' from my Conair Steam Mop.

I finally seized my chance to clean this past Sunday.  After being out all day Saturday, my husband surveyed our son's rosier-than-normal cheeks and declared that he needed to spend the next day out of the sun.  Perfect!  On Sunday morning, I helped my husband load up the boat and sent him off to do some solo sailing, while I got down to some serious housewifery.  I vacuumed the whole house, including the porch, which was covered in not just sand but whole DUNES.  I steam-mopped the tiles in the entryway.  I scrubbed the tiles in my shower until they returned to their natural beige.  I was just wondering whether I should pull out the carpet shampooer when my husband returned. 

"Put on a bathing suit and come with me," he demanded.  "I've got the boat moored in the creek down at the golf course.  You need to come out with me."  I protested that I wasn't done cleaning.  "I need your help, I can't get the boat back onto the trailer by myself," he admitted, "and also, the creek is really cool, you need to come see this."  So my son and I decked ourselves out in bathing suits and baseball caps and SPF 50, and we walked down to the golf course, where we found our little boat moored to a low-hanging palm tree.  And indeed, the creek was very cool, all shaded with palms and live oaks dripping Spanish moss.  It felt like a lazy river ride at an amusement park, except less fake, because it really was a lazy float down a genuine Deep South-cum-tropical creek.  When we arrived at the boat launch an hour later, we had an easy time of loading the boat back onto the trailer, because I am now a STRONG 115 lbs.  Then we came home and cleaned the boat and put it away and had a swim in the pool and I cooked turkey burgers for dinner and drank a beer.

I did not, however, ever get around to mopping the kitchen floor.

As we were getting into bed, I told my husband my new theory of the Kitchen Floor Fun Barometer.  "That makes sense," he agreed, "and there's also sand in the refrigerator.  I think that's a pretty good indicator of our lifestyle."

Recent Observations

Observation #1: There was a very large, very dark bruise on my calf, the result of my poor boat-hauling abilities on the Saturday before last.  The next day, I acquired several mosquito bites -- astonishingly, these were the first mosquito bites I'd received during my 11 months of living in Florida.  One mosquito targeted the center of the bruise, and the next morning, there was a circle of bruise-free skin-colored skin right where the mosquito bit me.  It was slightly itchy, of course, but that mosquito sucked the bruise right out.  I have a feeling that somehow there are millions of dollars to be made off this discovery.  Do you think it would work for dark undereye circles?

Observation #2: One of the clerks at Albertsons grocery store, an otherwise nondescript middle aged man, was wearing hibiscus-print board shorts with his official Albertsons golf shirt.  This disturbed me.  There are very few careers open to men for which it is appropriate to wear bathing suits on the job.  Lifeguard, cabana boy, surfing instructor, model... you will note that "grocery store clerk" is not on the list.  Maybe I'm hopelessly staid, but I don't want to wonder if the person packing up my canteloupe and Frosted Mini Wheats is wearing underwear or not.

The red flowers on his bathing trunks didn't even coordinate with his burgundy polo shirt.  Total fail.

Observation #3: If I wear lace underwear to Pilates class, it will have much the same effect as applying a microplane grater to my tailbone.  Chose ALL of your workout clothing wisely, is all I'm saying.

Observation #4: It appears that I only shaved one leg when I showered last night.  My right leg is smooth, my left leg is markedly less so.  I am torn as to whether I should go do an emergency single leg shave, put on long trousers rather than capris, or just say "screw it" and leave everything as is. 

Notical.

My husband bought a boat.  "It doesn't make any sense to live on the water and not have a boat," he kept telling me.  I made him promise to wait until after we'd gotten our house in DC rented out, but our house has been tenanted for several months now, and he could wait no longer. 

He didn't get just any old boat, he purchased one of the oddest watercraft in existence, a Hobie Mirage Adventure Island.  It's a kayak... with a sail... and foot pedals... and two outriggers.  It's weird.  It's also pretty cool.

We tested one out a few weeks ago, all three of us, sailing around Sarasota Bay.  The model we tried had the optional trampolines in place, which turned it into a trimaran.  Click the link so you can see what I'm talking about.  See where that dog is?  That's where I was, and the boy was on the other side.  It was awesome.  My husband sat in the middle, sailing and foot-pedaling the boat, while I lounged on the trampoline.  "This is perfect," I said.  "It combines your favorite sport of sailing with my favorite sport of lying down."  We tooled around the harbor and briefly took the boat out on the open Gulf.  It was fun.  I gave him my blessing to buy the boat.

He bought the boat on Friday afternoon, and Saturday afternoon we took it out for the first time, and it was... not fun.  Not for me.  Not at all.

Our first mistake was where we chose to put the boat into the water.  I suggested a spot, but we wound up about half a mile away at a designated boat ramp on the Intracoastal Waterway.  The place was full of powerboats, powerboats, powerboats.  We don't have a trailer (not yet, at least; we've purchased a used one, but have to get a trailer hitch for our SUV before we can use it) so we first had to get the boat off the top of the car and down to the water.  We got the boat off the car without too much trouble -- gravity was helpful -- but moving it across the parking lot was murder.  Really.  I almost died, I'm pretty sure of that.  The boat weighs about 150lbs when it's fully rigged, and I was expected to carry half of it.  The heavy half.  The heavy, pointy end part, with the rudder sticking out.  I barely managed to not die, and I scored myself a vicious bruise on my calf from the rudder slicing into it.  So far, not fun.

We got the boat into the water in between powerboats being loaded in and out, and we realized that we couldn't put the mast up yet because we'd have to go under a low bridge to get out into the main waterway.  This bridge was marked with several large signs saying "NO JUMPING OR DIVING," which did nothing to deter a bunch of preteen boys.  I should give them the benefit of the doubt -- it is entirely possible that they weren't disobedient but merely illiterate.  One of the boys leapt off the bridge just as we were coming out the other side, landing within inches of the pointy end of one of our amas.  He came up to the surface and angrily yelled at us "you guys were lucky!"  "No, YOU were lucky," I yelled back.  "Lucky for what?"  "Lucky your parents didn't abort you," roared my husband.

Oh yes, we were off to a great start.

We didn't have the trampolines on the boat -- the dealer won't have them in stock until next week -- so my son and I had to squish onto the cargo area on the back of the kayak, and once we had the sail up, I had to hunch down.  My son took this opportunity to lick my face repeatedly, which I told him was inappropriate.  "I'm kissing you like a dog," he claimed.  "You are not a dog, you are a human," I reminded him.  Meanwhile, having both of us at the back of the boat meant that we were riding perhaps an inch above the water.  The kayak alone is rated to hold 350lbs, and as a family we collectively weigh 315, but the weight wasn't balanced.  It just wasn't working, and my husband wanted to take the boat out into the Gulf, so I kindly agreed to get off the boat (with the boy) and walk the hot half-mile back to the car and bring it around to the beach.  And I did.  And it was hot, and my shoes were full of sand and were rubbing blisters, but my son didn't complain and I didn't either.

Once we got to the beach, we quickly found my in-laws, and I settled my son down on the blanket with a sandwich and went out into the waves.  The wind was strong, about 20mph, and the waves were much larger than normal.  Of course, "normal" Gulf waves are pretty wimpy, especially in the eyes of someone used to the Atlantic, so I'm talking about 3 foot swells.  It didn't take long for the blue and yellow sail of the sail-ma-yak to come into view, and soon my husband was coasting triumphantly through the waves onto the shore.

The triumph quickly turned into agony, though, as we realized that he'd come in so fast, he hadn't pulled up any of the sticky-down bits of the boat before he hit the sand.  Not the daggerboard, not the pedals, and most definitely not the rudder.  With the help of my father-in-law and some random dude who'd been swimming, we pushed the boat back into the waves and (after much swishing and splashing and maybe some cursing) got all of the bits up and out of the way.  Once again, I had the pointy back end of the boat, and I got the rudder up.  It swung up suspiciously easily, and once we were on shore, we discovered that the pin that holds it in place had bent.  Forget smashing a bottle of champagne... the boat is well and truly christened when the first thing breaks.

Did I mention that this also happened to be the drum circle evening, at the drum circle beach, so all of our drum circle friends got to see the floundering?  Yeah. 

My husband grabbed his drum out of the car, and we joined the drum circle, but within ten minutes he was up and out.  He wanted to sail.  He wanted me to come with him, and dutifully I obeyed.  We left our son with his grandparents and sailed off, literally, into the sunset.

Now, the thought did cross my mind that perhaps it was not so smart to head out into the open ocean with a somewhat broken rudder, but what do I know about boats?  Nothing, really, as you can tell by my use of technical terms like "sticky-down bits."  My husband does know a lot about sailing... why, he had four college credits in sailing!  Surely he would know better than I whether or not the rudder was truly broken.  Surely he would not sail off with his precious princess of a wife in an uncontrollable craft.

Yeah.  We had no problem sailing swiftly out from shore, and it was not until we were well out, and the sun was about to sink into the ocean, that my husband realized that YES THE DAMN RUDDER REALLY WAS BROKEN.  And also WE HAVE NO CONTROL OF THE BOAT.  I laid down on my belly, stretching across the rear of the craft, to try and assess the damage and to see if I could magically repair it.  No magic repairs were possible, so I pulled up the dangling, useless rudder and strapped it to the top of the boat.

This is when I realized that I was really, truly not having any fun.  I also began to feel seasick as we rolled up and over wave after wave.  (I later learned that bending over is pretty much the fastest way to get seasick.  Crawling on your belly, with face mere inches from the surf, is also extremely effective.)  But I held it together.  I could still see the beach, and I knew that if worst came to worst, I could easily abandon ship and swim into shore.  I was wearing my Coast Guard-Approved Personal Flotation Device, even, so as long as nothing bit me on the way back, I didn't have any reason to fear for my life.  My husband insists that it was great fun to overcome the obstacle of not being able to steer the boat, and maybe I'm crazy, but for me, it takes more than being reasonably certain that I'm not going to die for something to qualify as fun.

We did get back to the beach, of course.  We took down the sail and paddled and pedaled our way back in, but we wound up far down the beach from where we'd started.  Once I was on the shore, the seasickness suddenly grew stronger, and I delicately deposited my sandwich back into the surf.

Thank goodness my father-in-law was willing to help us get the boat back up on top of the car, and my brother-in-law (who is over 6' tall, and strong, and a kayak-owner himself) showed up just in time to lend a hand as well, so all I had to do was supervise and concentrate on not vomiting any more.

Oddly enough, I am willing to go out on the boat again.  However, I am not going to do so until we have the trampolines and the trailer, and I am insisting that our next excursion be in a bay or other inland water, rather than out in the ocean in high winds.  I don't think my husband quite buys my argument that maybe we should get used to the boat in easy waters before going back in the ocean, but he knows he can only push me so far. 

I've since discovered that the rudder pin we broke is actually designed to break, to prevent further damage to the rudder.  The boat even comes with spare rudder pins, and if we need more, they cost one dollar.  There are not many things you can break on a boat that only cost a dollar to replace.

I have a feeling I'm going to have to get a lot more nautical, whether I like it or not.

34, 57.

Yesterday we got a Wii Fit, and spent a good part of our post-tacos evening playing with it.  I realize that I am perhaps the last person in my demographic to get one, which means that not only have I read quite a bit about other people's adventures with the Wii Fit, but I'm also going to write this entry based on the assumption that you've played with one, too.

I loaded up my Mii -- my Mii with the lime green shirt and auburn flip-bob that looks almost exactly like the Mii on the back of the Wii Fit disc box -- and did my body test.  I'm 34, 5'2", and the Fit agreed with my German bathroom scale that I am currently 115 pounds, which gave me a BMI of 21.something.  Smack-dab in the middle of that yellow healthy weight zone, right under the mark of 22 that the Fit informs me is the statistically healthiest point on the chart.  So far, so good.  No surprises, even though I'd been prepared for the Fit to give me a shockingly innaccurate weight.  Next, I was instructed to stand straight and still so the balance board could measure my center of balance, and after years of T-Tapp and yoga, I had that little red dot making my center of balance precisely in the center of the board.  Rocked it!  Lookitme!  Whoo!

Next up was the basic balance test, the one where you have to shift your weight from side to side to hold it in a specific spot for three seconds.  This was surprisingly difficult.  It felt like I was backwards, that my left and the screen's left were on opposite sides.  I only managed to accomplish three out of five rounds in my thirty seconds, and the Fit scoffed at me.  It then gave me a Wii Fit Age of....

Are you ready?

57.

Fifty-freaking-seven.  This with a chart-perfect BMI and bullseye center of balance.  57!  This seemed such an injustice that my husband investigated, and realized I'd done my test with the balance board facing the wrong direction, so I really was trying to do it backwards.  Oops.  (For the record, my husband barely scraped into the healthy weight zone with a BMI of 19, and his Wii Fit age was a mere 5 years above his actual age, which is pretty darn good considering that his center of balance is way, way off because he's still favoring the foot with the not-yet-healed broken big toe.)  I'm going to redo my body test today, and I have every expectation that I'll shave a few years off my assumed age.

And yet, I'm not feeling like 57 is all that wrong.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that recently, I've been feeling like 34 is almost as old as 57.  That I am old.  That I am aging, sliding down the slope toward decrepitude.  That my fitness goal can no longer be "develop perfect body" but "keep body from falling apart in the next five minutes."  That my ass looks like something you'd see on a tabloid cover with the tagline "Star's Secret Bikini Body Horror!" 

There's a lot more I have to say on this topic, but I'm running out of time for this morning.  You can expect further entries on the intertwined topics of age, fitness, body image and paparazzi-worthy backside nightmares.  But make me feel a little bit better, won't you, and tell me what your first Wii Fit Age was... I know you remember.  I know it's scarred onto your consciousness.

Bittersweet Bus Stop

I just walked back in from putting my son on the bus for the last time.  There are raindrops still dotting my bare arms and freckling my shirt.  It's the last day of school, the last day my son will attend the local elementary school.   Come August and the new school year, he'll be starting second grade at the stand-alone gifted school.

I'm delighted -- we're all delighted -- that he got into the gifted school.  It's a dream school.  I am so enthused about this school, if we were offered the chance to go back to DC and have him attend Sidwell Friends with Sasha and Malia for the same tuition of ZERO, I don't think I'd accept the offer.  Not unless there were some guaranteed playdates, the good kind of playdates, the kind where the moms hang out and drink wine while the kids romp around, and even then it'd be a hard choice.  The gifted school is THAT fantastic.  So I'm thrilled that he's going there in the fall, but at the same time, my poor baby.

He's six years old, and when he starts second grade, it will the FOURTH school he's attended.  As we stood waiting for the bus this morning, rain spitting down on us, he looked up sadly and said, "I want to stay at my new school a long time.  I mean, when I start there, I want to stay there a long time."

That's the plan, baby.  That's the plan.

Vaycay

The nice thing about living three miles from the beach is that as soon as I have a scrap of free time, it feels like I'm on vacation.  Even an evening or a Saturday spent at the beach feels like a vacation, so a three day weekend?  Totally feels like a vacation, without any of the annoyances of traveling.

I went to the beach four times this weekend.  Three different beaches, four visits.  Three picnic dinners, one thermal travel mug full of morning coffee, and many, many bikinis.  (I'd thought I'd bought too many bikinis when I went crazy over the figleaves.com 90% off sale.  No.  Now that summer is here, my lifestyle is bikini-intensive.  I'm watching Figleaves for more sales.)  Two of the beaches I visited were our normal beaches, the ones we can get to in under 10 minutes of driving, the ones we go to all the time, but on Sunday evening we went to the beach that recently claimed the #2 spot on Dr. Beach's List of America's Most Awesomest Beaches.  (I made up the name of the list.  I think it might actually be called something boring like "America's Best Beaches.")  Second place is a respectable showing, but because the #1 beach is in Hawaii, this beach is actually the best beach in the continental United States.  Oh yeah.  And while the #1 beach is a long, long flight away, it took us exactly 30 minutes to get from our house to the #2 beach, and that includes the time we spent crawling around the parking lot looking for a space.

I am getting very tan.

Once a T-Tapper

Today I'm wearing the black tank top I bought at the 2007 T-Tapp retreat, the one that spells out "t-tapper" in crystals, and a pair of grey Nike yoga pants cropped just above the knee.  From my attire, you might guess that I am planning to work out today, and you'd be right.*  But I'm not planning to do a T-Tapp DVD.  No, I'm planning to hit the Friday evening Pilates class at the Y.

I haven't done many full T-Tapp workouts in many months.  I just can't work up the motivation to do a DVD at home when I could pop over to the Y and do a class.  This has nothing to do with T-Tapp, or the effectiveness of T-Tapp -- I know that if I was devoting the same amount of time to T-Tapp, I'd look even better right now.  No, I just am craving the entertainment of leaving the house and being with a group and not knowing for certain which exercise I'll have to do next.  Working out is my #1 reason for getting out of the house these days, if you don't count walking across the street to the bus stop as "getting out of the house."  (I don't.  It's not exactly a high point of my day.)  And getting out of the house is as important for my sanity as exercise is for my butt.

This isn't to say I've abandonded T-Tapp entirely.  I do little pieces here and there... a Primary Back Stretch, or a round of Diva Derriere and Awesome Legs as I watch TV.  But the most important thing I do, what's really making the most difference, is that I've worked up the courage to do Organs in Place in the Pilates classroom before the class starts.  I can always tell that my abs are working much harder when I've done OIP first.  It also makes it more feasible (I won't say "easier") to hold my belly flat, to suck it in so it doesn't round out as I crunch.  (Madonna's trainer, I read in Vogue, moved away from teaching classic Pilates because Pilates can round the belly out.  Madonna doesn't want that.  I don't want that.)  It also ensures that I'll spend the next twenty-four hours rubbing my lower abdomen and trying to stretch out the aches in my torso.  But that's a good thing.

I also do everything -- Pilates, yoga, unloading the dishwasher -- while trying to maintain T-Tapp form.  This is why I can be found huffing and puffing and sweating through my pants within the first ten minutes of class.  Yay!

*This should perhaps be a shameful confession, but on any day that I plan to go to the Y, I dress myself in workout clothes as soon as I get up.  This means that anything else I do during the day is accomplished while wearing yoga pants and a tank top.  However, this part of the world is so relentlessly casual, it's not unusual for my workout togs to be one of the dressier looks at Publix.

p.s. Thank you all for still reading!  Will try not to disappear for so long again.

Water World

All winter and all spring, the sun blazed down from cloudless blue skies.  No rain, compounding a three-year drought.  The little ponds around our condo dipped lower and lower, exposing red mud banks that hardened in the sun.  Some of the ponds disappeared entirely, forcing the gators and snapping turtles to shuffle off in search of new homes.

Every day we had brilliant sunshine and low humidity.  Everything green was slowly turning brown, and the sunsets on the beach, bereft of clouds to reflect the colors, were frankly boring, but can you really complain about day after day of blue skies?  No.  No, you can't, at least not on your blog, unless you want people to hate you.

It's raining now.

Ten days ago, my husband came home from DC, where he'd spent ten days enduring constant cold rain.  That afternoon, after he landed at our little city on the Gulf, the skies surprised us with billowy thunderhead clouds, which built and darkened and poured down rain.

We were delighted.  Rain!  Finally!  It was actually quite exciting to see some weather, to feel the power of a tropical thunderstorm.

Since then, it's rained every day.  At first we just had day after day of sunny mornings followed by an afternoon or evening thunderstorm.  "It's summer," we said to each other.  "This is classic tropical weather."  But now we have had several days of rain all day, on top of a week of daily downpours.  The ponds are full, and the gators and turtles are invisible, probably lurking delightedly in the bottom of their cool, fresh new watery homes.  The ground is sprouting mushrooms, delicious-looking ones with creamy heads as big as my fist.  (Even if they are, as I suspect, an edible variety, I'm not touching them.  God only knows what kind of chemicals the landscapers are spraying on the grass here.  I've seen the "stay off" flags, I'm not eating ANYTHING that touches the ground.)

Last night, the rain came with unseasonably cool air, and we slept with our windows open.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to say we kept the windows open all night; I am left feeling that I didn't do much actual sleeping.  Our bedroom looks onto an "environmental area" (translation: scrubby swamp and water-catchment area, assuming it rains) which is currently full of water.  And frogs.  Lord have mercy, the frogs.  When we went to bed, a rather melodious species was on the stage, thousands of them singing "guuurl" in low, harmonious tones.  But at some point in the night, the guuurl chorus ceded to the barkers, and then the quackers, and then they all went quiet for a while, until dawn, when all manner of frog and bird and who-knows-what kicked up a ruckus.

These are the perils of paradise, my friends. 

It's not ALL good.

I'm afraid it's been long enough since I've posted that I'm going to have to do one of those random bits and pieces update posts.  So here's the good, and the not so good.

Good: The weather is fantastic.  Admittedly, there is a pretty serious drought going on, but on a day-to-day basis, it's hard to complain about blue skies, breezes, and high temperatures ranging from 75 to 80.

Good: Since I've admitted that yoga is not agreeing with my foot, it's been behaving beautifully.  I am happily bipedal and only very occasionally bothered by a twinge of nerve-ishness.

Bad: My foot is fine, but my husband has taken over the role of Family Gimp.  Two weeks ago, he broke his big toe in a nasty, nasty way.  I'll spare you the details, so just trust me: nasty.  He'll probably lose the nail, too, which will make for a long, hot summer of looking revolting in sandals.

Good... no, ASTOUNDING: The weekend immediately following the breaking of the toe, I realized that if anything was going to get done around the house, it was going to get done by me.  Cleaning - me.  Cooking - me.  Childcare - me.  Shopping - me.  Laundry - me.  But this isn't the greatest change from the way our lives normally run, so it hasn't been oppressive.  Actually, it had the reverse effect of making me feel quite empowered.  So empowered did I feel that I found myself opening the box that had been sitting in my kitchen for the last six or more months, the box containing the kitchen faucet I bought from Amazon shortly after we moved in.  (I paid less than the price in that link.  A lot less.  More than 50% less, because I ROCK THE SHOPPING.)  There was nothing wrong with the existing faucet in our sink, except it was the boring, bottom of the line builder's special, something like this $15 jobbie, except even less stylish.  It worked, although the low spigot combined with the double bowl sink style meant that it was a challenge to fill pots or wash anything particularly large, like a cutting board.  But it worked, and I thought that changing it would be beyond my DIY skills, so the pretty faucet sat in its box, waiting for some handier person to come along and offer to install it for me.

This did not happen.  Plumbers don't just come riding up on white horses, you know.

So on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to just open the box and read the instructions.  And they seemed pretty straightforward, and I had all the tools (thanks to my brother and sister-in-law, who for Christmas gave me -- ME -- a set of basic tools with awesomely girly purple and fuschia handles) so I went for it. My husband thought I was nuts, but I DID IT.  I took out the old faucet and installed the gorgeous new one, and it only took one hour from pulling all the cleaning supplies and trash bags out from under the sink to testing the new faucet.  No leaks.  It looked great.  And did I mention that I did it all myself?  I did.  With pink and purple tools, wearing leopard print pants.

It's amazing how much fancier a kitchen looks when it has a $350 faucet rather than a $15 one.

Good: My husband's temporary incapacitation has also resulted in an increase in the amount of one-on-one quality time I've spent with my son.  We usually spend our weekends going out as a family (which is awesome, don't get me wrong) so it's been fun to go out just with my son.  Very fun to take him to the library to help him pick out a bag full of novels.  (This itself deserves its own Good: After ages of insisting on only science books, my son's finally learned to love novels.  Thank you, Captain Underpants!)  It's delightful to be able to take him out to lunch and confirm that he really is an interesting person to have lunch with... he doesn't talk about Captain Underpants too much at all.

Also Good:  BzzAgent sent me some coupons for free Guiltless Grill meals at Chili's, so our post-library lunch cost me only $10, including a very generous tip.  The cedar-plank-grilled tilapia I tried was definitely tasty, but I gotta say, I'm so not down with the no-carb lo-carb thing.  I'm pro-carb.  To me, a meal isn't a meal unless it has a starch.  A meal can be all starch, sure!  Bring on the spicy noodles and the bagels!  But no starch?  Nooooo.  Not on my watch.  So the tilapia was delicious, and the accompanying broccoli was steamed to an attractive green (as well as free of parmesan cheese, just as I'd requested) but the plate just seemed to be crying out for some Spanish rice.  I snagged quite a few french fries off my son's plate.  Thankfully he is as generous as he is gregarious, so it was all good.

Good, but Also Really Disgusting: BzzAgent also sent me some goodies from Scrubbing Bubbles, an Automatic Shower Cleaner and those stamp-in toilet gels.  The shower cleaner is working fairly well, although I find I have to adjust the batteries after every few uses, but the gels are terrifying.  I'd heard that they give off a fresh scent, so I put one in my son's toilet, which tends to smell... not so fresh.  (He's six.  Sometimes his attention wanders, and when his attention wanders....) The toilet gels definitely masked the little-boy-bathroom smell, but the chemical-clean scent that smothered it was overpowering.  It rolled out of the bathroom and poisoned the air in the hallway.  I kept waiting for the thing to melt away, but it lasted far longer than the promised week.  Eventually, tired of hearing my husband and son complain about the stench, and tired of choking on it myself, I steeled my nerves and scraped the gooey remnants off the toilet bowl.  Flush.  Goodbye.  And ugh.  (The shower cleaner smells fine, by the way, just lightly "clean" and not at all offensive.)

Very Good: I got some good news about my son, which I'll share later.

Good: I've been taking Pilates classes at the Y, as an alternative to yoga while my foot fully recuperates, and I've been loving them.  The instructor definitely veers off the strict Josef Pilates script, but her classes are so fun.  She blasts music and makes comments about our butts and has us do ridiculous things with rubber playground balls.  It hurts so good.

Bad: The Pilates classes, in this beautifully warm weather, make me sweat.  Unfortunately, I seem to be not so much an armpit-sweater or a forehead-sweater but a groin-sweater.  I discovered this, much to my dismay, while wearing a pair of tight beige yoga pants... in the front row of the class.  I don't think it was too noticable, but it was distressing.  It was just sweat, ladies behind me!  Just sweat!  I was sweaty!  Unless I figure out some sort of miracle solution, I'll just have to wear black pants to class until November.

Good: Speaking of miracle solutions, my friend Rosie sent me an eyelash serum to try after she read about me ripping out a chunk of eyelashes back in January.  And it's working!  Last time I ripped out eyelashes, it took six months for the lashes to grow back in to a halfway-decent length.  This time, they're almost entirely grown in after only three months.  Stunning.  The stuff is from Arbonne, and it's called Virtual Illusion Lash Enhancer.   If you want some, go to Rosie.  She'll hook you up.

Good: It's time for "No Reservations."  Catch you all later.