What's in a name?

The other day when Dad was watching "This Old House" I heard a name that made me stop and wonder- "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING, PARENTS?" The architect's name is Treff LaFleche (pronounced "la flesh".) With a last name like that you would think the parents would have named the poor kid something a lot more normal than "Treffle." I'll bet there were times when he must have wondered what his parents were thinking, too. Grades K-12 must have been tough. I honestly thought the guy must be a retired porn star or something like that.

Now I'm really curious to know- what's his middle name?

Closing in

This is the big week! Dad is finally closing in on the end of this project. It has been a long and grueling haul. Tomorrow is the end of the year for this. Next week will be the week of "cleaning up" the loose ends for everyone. Then it's goodbye to 6:00 a.m. conference calls and extra long days.

Looking ahead to behind

So today, I went to a book review. The book was "Dragon Slippers," a young adult (read: tween through teen) fantasy book. It sounded very interesting. The author, Jessica Day George, came to our review and we were asking her questions about her creative style, etc. She has pages of ideas for books and is always working on something, even though she has a three-year-old. She also is an avid knitter- scarves, hats, socks, etc. She said she is always knitting something. I commented to Karry that I never do anything. She pointed out that I hike-thats something. Well, it may be something, but it really isn't the same because it doesn't produce anything you can leave behind for your posterity. Then Karry pointed out that that may be true, but at least hiking doesn't leave you with a big behind either! We laughed about that one.

But seriously, I haven't produced much besides seven babies and can't take any credit for their successes or accomplishments. I've tried to think if I've produced anything that my kids would think was worth taking home once I'm gone and they have to clean out my house. No quilts or crafts. No woodworking projects. No paintings or pottery. No witty, insightful journal (so far, everything I've written has been pretty boring or dry.) Anything worth squabbling over was inherited from someone else.

So I guess the challenge for me is figuring out how to make some changes that will make better use of whats left of my future so that I can leave something tangible behind. (Of course, then I need to figure out what on earth I could do that would be worth hanging on to.)

Here I am again

In the past ten days I have gone to the gym four times to do physical therapy on my own. I would pat myself on the back, but I can't reach that far yet. Don't worry though, the physical therapist suggested some extra exercises for that today, so I expect to be patting myself on the back in the next week or so.

For the past two nights, 'Ui has gone into the garage of her own volition. Once it was completely her idea- she asked-really! Last night she was hanging out in the kitchen so I opened the door to the garage just a little and left it opened for a few minutes. After crouching and staring suspiciously into the dark garage, she walked into the garage just a foot or two to see what was going on and I walked towards the door, trying to look like I was doing something else, and closed it. Much better than three nights ago when she had wised up to the new night time routine, darting around the kitchen just out of reach and then streaking down the stairs to hide out in Steven's room (where she spent the entire night, thank goodness.)

The other day, I was driving home westbound on Center Street. When I came to 4th west the light was green so I started my right turn. A car in the eastbound left-turn lane decided to make a left turn at the same time, and the driver flipped me off for getting in her way! Hello! I was the one who had the right-of-way! Some people.

Little J has been here for two days in a row. He has gotten pretty interactive and fun. He loves the barrel of monkeys, or just the barrel or just the monkeys or any combination. I introduced him to the slinky today. Pretty entertaining.

They found my foot, they found my foot!

We have been copying our family videos to DVD. I made it all the way through the VHS tapes last week. (yes, we did get the infamous nose-picking episode) When I tried to start copying the 8mm tapes, the 8mm deck wasn't working right so we had to take it to the shop. Fortunately it only needed cleaning and adjusting. When I brought it home and put back on the rack, it was wobbly. One foot was missing. I took it back to the shop. They thought I must have lost it myself. I was sure it wasn't wobbly when I brought it in. They said check your car and house. I did and told them the foot must be their problem. This morning they called to say they found my foot. Hurray!

Stay tuned for more family video updates.

Lots of little thoughts

Because of the Japanese Beetle, we planted gardens at Michael's house and Jeremiah's house this year. We planted too much and this is the first year we have had more tomatoes and squash than we could use. I froze some of the tomatoes, but mostly we gave them away. There are lots of older fixed-income people in our ward and I took a big box of produce to church every week and set it outside the Relief Society room with a package of bags and a sign that said "please help yourself." It was fun to watch the people get their little bags of green beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. I would think "come on, take more, have plenty. I don't want to figure out what to do with this stuff." and they would be commenting to each other, "oh my, I hope I can eat this much!" Anyway, the gardens are basically done. I am a pretty lazy gardener, so I am glad for me. But I am sad for all my little old friends.

I am speaking to a group of science teachers at their Professional Development Day in two days. Hhmm... how do you make beetles, chemicals, nematodes, inverse distance weighting and EPA/APHIS/USDA/UDAF/GIS and Bayer Chemical sound interesting for 50 minutes (x 2 sessions)? No matter how many different pictures you use in a powerpoint, a beetle is still a beetle.

'Ui has been relegated to the garage at night again, now that the weather has cooled off. The little stinker just can't leave us alone at 3 in the morning. If only she would make the connection, she could stay in.

I am looking for a pumpkin bread recipe like the bread at Kneaders. So far, close but not quite. I'm not sure my waistline can handle all the recipe testing.

Say it ain't so, Shepherds! I will miss Shepherd's Cakes and Candies. They closed at the beginning of the month. They were my go-to store for high-quality chocolate, little tiny zip lock bags and other specialty cake and candy making items. The new occupant of the shop, a party supply shop, will carry chocolate until the end of the year, but they aren't open yet. I hope they carry the brands I like. Of course, after years of not doing any chocolates, I had just agreed to do a simple chocolate class for relief society next month. Hope the new store really does open in time like they said they would so that I can stock up in time. Now . . .where to find those nifty little zip locks? Guess I will have to hide my supply and ration them out.

I planted a few pie pumpkin plants so that we could enjoy some stuffed pumpkin dinners this fall (and one or two amazing pumpkin pies). I haven't tried one yet to see if they are any good (my sweet potatoes were NOT good- too much water maybe), but there must be over 30 little sugar pumpkins out there. Hhmm... maybe my little church friends?

Three lame geeks

Just in case you were worried, we are still here doing the same old same-old. Today was General Conference Sunday and Liz has come to stay because she doesn't have to work tomorrow. It occurred to her just a few minutes ago that the three of us are lame geeks because all three of us are sitting on the bed, each with our Macbooks, playing the very same computer game (mahjong) when we really should have been going to bed early.

It's been a while since either of us posted, because we just don't ever have anything clever or interesting to write about.

I have spent a lot of the last two months working on getting my neck to behave itself. All that physical therapy is so time consuming! And it cuts into my regular workout time. I didn't seem to have any trouble putting in the time 2-3 times a week when I was paying for it. Now that I am working on my own, I am having a really hard time scraping together the self-discipline to stick with it. Something always interferes. Oh, well- nothing to do about it except keep trying.