Water

It got to 112 today in southwest Ridgecrest. I don't actually know where that weather station is, although I always imagine it's just down the street, and I wasn't watching our patio thermometer closely during the afternoon, so I'm not sure how hot it was at our house. But it was 106 at 6 pm, when I did finally glance at the thermometer, so let's just say it was hot. Tomorrow's supposed to be worse, and then it'll drop back to around 100 for a few days before gearing up for another round of blistering temps.

In theory, I'm ready for it; in practice, no. Mentally, I'm ready; physically, no. "I can deal with this, it's not so bad," I say, while lying on the couch, unable to stand. Today I sat on a plastic patio chair to pick clothespins off the ground, moving the chair a few inches every 30 seconds or so to reach the next batch, because I couldn't imagine getting down on my hands and knees. It doesn't help that I'm on another round of nasty Keflex for my strep throat -- Keflex is a good antibiotic, in the sense of being effective, but it doesn't make you feel good when you're taking it. Plus, this is what -- my 6th round of antibiotics since Christmas? I've lost count. I've never taken so many antibiotics in my life. Something's happened to my immune system (as in, I don't have one anymore).

Rocket Boy is convinced that Ridgecrest is hazardous to one's health. I have to agree. Or maybe just to our health. With our 100% northern European genes, maybe we just don't belong in the desert.

Our main ways of coping with the heat are shade, lethargy, and water. We try to stay out of the sun as much as possible -- and our big covered patio is a great help with that. I park the car in the garage, always. I drive around parking lots looking for even a tiny bit of shade, even just the shadow of a very large truck or SUV.

When in the Mojave desert, do as the reptiles do.

As for lethargy, well, I've always been good at that one. My daily walks with the twins are over until fall. Rocket Boy likes to take an evening stroller walk, but only after the temperature drops below 100. During the day I try to be very sedate, except I've got these two little boys who don't know the meaning of the word...

And then there's water. Glorious, heavenly water. Water that makes our swamp cooler work. Water from our faucets that we drink (except that this time of year it comes out of the tap warm, which I find rather distasteful). Water that we wash clothes and dishes and our sweaty bodies in. The twins love to drink "why" (their word for water). "Moh why!" they demand. Sometimes they argue about what they are going to drink at a particular meal. "Why!" Baby A will shout. "No, miyelk!" Baby B will argue.

Pause for gratuitous cute photo of twins enjoying water:



The Indian Wells Valley (where we live) actually has quite a bit of water, from an aquifer, but it's using that water up much faster than the aquifer is being replenished. And the water lower down is of a much poorer quality. Supposedly they won't run out of water for a long time, but it will gradually get more and more expensive to treat the water enough to make it drinkable.

Therefore the IWV water district has imposed severe water restriction rules this summer. You can only run sprinklers between 8 pm and 8 am, there can't be any visible run-off onto sidewalks, you can't use water to wash down a patio. Stuff like that.

You can, however, water by hand at any time of day. Mornings and evenings I go out with the hose and water the tortoises' grass (they have pieces of sod in their pens) and fill their water dishes. The twins then overturn the water dishes and I fill them again. Then the tortoises walk across their water dishes, obliviously, and I fill them again.

Then I turn off the water and hang the hose over the branch of a tree so the twins can't drag it around the yard. They know how to turn the water back on again, plus their hands are just starting to be strong enough to work the nozzle on the hose. This evening they amused themselves by turning on the water, grabbing the nozzle of the hose as it hung from the tree, and spraying what they could reach. Every few minutes I turned off the water again and said no no no, but you see, they work as a team. Baby B raced over to turn on the water again while Baby A manned the hose nozzle. I was very much outnumbered.

The other hose in the backyard has a sprinkler attached to it. The babies know how to turn that one on too (how I miss the days when they couldn't even walk, when they just lay on their backs gazing at me in adoration), and they do so at every opportunity. Somehow, last night, we all went in to get ready for bed without noticing that they'd turned the sprinkler on again. Somehow, even though I opened our window before we went to sleep -- and our window looks out over the area of the yard where the sprinkler is -- we didn't hear the sprinkler. Not until about 7 am did I suddenly realize that water was running (upon which realization, I rushed out in my nightgown and turned off the sprinkler). So if you figure the twins must have turned on the water around 8 pm last night, that means we were watering for 11 hours straight.

Now technically, we were within our rights to do that. It was between 8 pm and 8 am, and there was no visible runoff onto sidewalks (just a swamp in our backyard).

But I'm not looking forward to next month's water bill....

We survived

OK, I think I can say we survived this, as I knew we would, but it was really touch and go there for a while. Baby A did not have any more vomiting episodes after Sunday, but I kept him home from daycare on Monday, and during the day I became more and more sure I had strep throat again. Baby B wouldn't eat his dinner Monday night and threw up his milk Tuesday morning (all over himself, the floor, and me). I felt nauseated all Tuesday morning and finally threw up around 11:30 am. My sore throat was killing me, but for a long time I didn't take ibuprofen for it because I figured I'd vomit it back up, and I couldn't go to Urgent Care because I had a vomiting baby (although actually he never threw up again), plus I figured I wouldn't be able to keep an antibiotic down so no sense getting one yet (although I never threw up again either, so in retrospect I should have gone, but oh well).

Tuesday was a very bad day. In so many ways. To keep myself from bawling, I did laundry. Three big loads, all dried on the clothesline.

Today Rocket Boy came down with the stomach flu too, but the rest of us were OK, boos went back to daycare, and I went to Urgent Care to have my 3rd strep throat in 2 months diagnosed. Now I have 2 weeks worth of Keflex to take and an appointment with an ear nose and throat doctor for next week.

And I think we're going to be OK. Rocket Boy already feels better. For dinner tonight we're going to Casa Java for decaf lattes (boos will have chocolate milk) and scones. We think our shaky stomachs can handle scones. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like cooking again.

It's odd, though, I feel really down on myself. Maybe because I complained so much while it was going on. I keep thinking: what if I had strep throat, stomach flu, two-year-old twins, AND lived in Kyrgyzstan? What then, hmmmm? No doctor to go to, no antibiotic, no ginger ale in the refrigerator, no refrigerator, no daycare, mayhem in the streets...

Or what if, instead of recurrent strep throat, I had throat cancer? Now THAT would be something to feel bad about. No antibiotic available for THAT.

I think I just need to get beyond this. No more whining, no more focusing on the negative. WE SURVIVED and we are all going to be OK.

It got to 101 here today. But at least it isn't 111.

Father's Day

So we had a funny sort of a Father's Day, complete with meals out, greeting cards, a long drive, and major illness. Really, what more could you ask for? It's 10:15 pm right now and instead of blogging I should be helping Rocket Boy clean up vomit. I will in a minute.

The day started well, though Rocket Boy still has his cold. We got up, had tea and milk, and we were on 395 north to Olancha by about 9 am. We got to the Ranch House Cafe around 9:45 and had a good breakfast -- omelets and coffee for RB and me, pancakes and fruit for the boos. The twins had "made" a card for Daddy at daycare, and I had found a mildly humorous one at Albertson's, so those went over well.

Coming back, instead of turning off 395 to go back to Ridgecrest, we continued south on 14 because I wanted to show Rocket Boy a discovery I'd made on one of the nap-drives: the Indian Wells Brewery and Restaurant, on the site of the actual Indian Wells, for which our valley is named. You only pass it if you drive a stretch of 14 that we never drive. RB was duly impressed, and then we drove south on Highway 14 all the way to Jawbone Canyon to see if by any chance Mr. Bob (the 110-year-old desert tortoise) was up. He was indeed. He came up out of his burrow while we were there and ate a plate of lettuce and strawberries.

Then we went back up north on 14 so that I could show Rocket Boy another recent discovery: the turn-off to Burro Schmidt's tunnel, which we'd heard about on an episode of "California's Gold." He then suggested that we continue north on 14 back up to the Indian Wells Brewery, and look at it more closely. So we did that, went to the gift shop, but the restaurant didn't open until 4:30 (it was only about 12:30 by then).

Then we finally got off 14, went to the hardware store in Inyokern so RB could get some parts for his gate project, and then went home.

I thought we'd probably go to the Chinese buffet in town for dinner, but Rocket Boy had an interesting suggestion: how about that Brewery Restaurant? I thought that was a very bad idea, too fancy for two-year-olds, but RB called the restaurant and they said they'd be delighted to have us. We decided it would be best to go really really early.

So around 4 pm we got back in the car (I put on a skirt for the occasion), and headed for the restaurant, stopping along the way at the Inyokern hardware store again so Rocket Boy could get more parts.

There, disaster struck. While the babies and I waited for RB to emerge from the store, I suddenly heard a noise behind me that sounded as though Baby A was pouring a large quantity of liquid on himself. Since I knew he did not even have a sippy cup, I turned around to see what was going on. The source of the liquid was his poor little stomach, as he vomited copiously upon himself. Poor baby! I had no idea what to do, but found a beach towel in the back of the car and mopped him up a bit. He wailed desperately until Rocket Boy came back and I told him: "we're not going to the restaurant."

So, home, a quick wash, and a change of clothes, from Baby A's nice Father's Day outfit to a blue t-shirt and gray shorts. RB went out to work on his gate project and the babies and I hung out in the family room. I was putting Baby B's shoes on him so he could go outside when suddenly, whoops, Baby A's throwing up again, in 3 places on the rug. Babies are like cats: they won't stay in one place and vomit nicely on a vinyl floor, they wander around, getting it on all the carpets.

Another wash, another change of clothes, this time into a white t-shirt and black shorts. And maybe 15 minutes later he threw up all over the kitchen and I changed him into a green t-shirt and green shorts.

We decided that Rocket Boy would go to Kristy's, alone, for a quiet Father's Day dinner (he took his cards with him, to admire them again while he ate), Baby B would have leftovers and applesauce, Baby A would have nothing, and I would eat later. This worked well, and Baby A didn't throw up again until Baby B was through eating. This time I managed to catch the vomit in two towels and also showed him how to throw up in the toilet (a skill I consider almost as important as ordinary potty training).

Baby A threw up one more time while we were reading bedtime stories and I expect that our sleep will be interrupted tonight by further episodes. And then, of course, Baby B will get it, and I'll get it, and Rocket Boy will get it. Poor Rocket Boy, whose cold has spawned an awful case of laryngitis.

We will get through this, I know we will. It will be a Father's Day to remember, long after the boos have grown up and stopped speaking to us. It is silly, but I find vomiting babies to be among the sweetest of life's creatures. They are so pathetic! You just want to envelop their smelly little selves in your arms, wipe away the mess, kiss away the tears. Maybe it's because I spent so much time vomiting when I was pregnant with them, I just don't mind it when they vomit on my hands, in my hair. I'm washable.

But is the carseat?

Sometimes life is good, sometimes life is hard

Life in Ridgecrest seems so bipolar these days. Or maybe I should say life in Ridgecrest with two-year-old twins. One day I'll be thinking yeah, OK, I can do this, we can have a nice life here, tortoises, mountains, the big sky, the writers group, the liberals, the gem & mineral society... and the next day I'll be sitting at the park with yet ANOTHER religious mothers group nearby (this week they were talking about the life of Christ and giving me dirty looks), thinking about calling the movers.

Today the babies were really crabby, hitting each other, yelling, throwing things around, and Rocket Boy has a cold, so he wasn't a lot of help. And it was already too hot to go to the park. And there's nowhere else to go in Ridgecrest. But I was in a pretty good space, so I was coping, I was getting through the day. I made snack, I did a load of laundry and hung it on the line, I made lunch. After lunch the crabbiness intensified, so I strapped the boos into their carseats and did another long drive. We did the 395 to Garlock Road to 14 to 178 to China Lake Boulevard route. Highway 14 through Red Rock Canyon state park is so incredibly gorgeous.

I'm listening to All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy on CD in the car. This is my first book on CD, got it at the library on Thursday, and what a bad choice it was. I have trouble hearing the narrator's voice when I'm on the highway, it's too low, and when I can't follow the story, I find myself falling asleep, and when I can follow the story, I wish I couldn't because it depresses me. I thought I wanted to read some more Cormac McCarthy (I was very moved by The Road), but I guess I was wrong. Or maybe it's just the listening that I don't like. I'm already very worried about the characters, so I strain to hear what happens next, and then get upset about whatever it is. But I'm on the 4th CD now (out of 10, ack), so maybe I'll finish it. Or fall asleep at the wheel.

On our way home we were driving down China Lake Boulevard and I thought I'd stop at K-Mart and try to find Rocket Boy a Father's Day present that could be from the boos. But as I pulled into a parking space I thought: what?!! what could you possibly find at K-Mart that would make a nice present? So I pulled back out of the parking space and went on home. I tried to think of somewhere else to buy a present, but there is just nowhere.

Anyway, when we got back it was only 2:30 pm, and the boos got cranky again, so it was a long rest of the afternoon. Can I just say, for the record, that I wish I had never started potty training? Baby B is in love with the whole thing, of course, but now I think he's not ready. He hasn't successfully used the potty for a few days now, but he will not wear diapers (except to bed at night) and he will barely allow me to put him in a pullup. We sit in the bathroom together, him on the potty (not going), and after 15 minutes or so I say "well, you did a great job, now let's put on your pullup," and Baby B screams "NO!!!" and runs out of the bathroom bare bottomed. I chase him through the house, catch him, and try to force his legs into the pullup. "PEE POOP!!!" he screams, so I relent, and let him go back to sit on the potty for another 15 minutes, fruitlessly, and then we do it all over again. Meanwhile, Baby A, who has given up on potty training for the duration but likes to watch, hits Baby B with a plastic lemon. And thus the afternoon goes by.

Oh, one related incident: the babies and I were hanging out and one of us (no need to mention who) passed some gas. I said brightly, "oh, what was that?" and Baby A said "Airplane!"

We went out for an early dinner at Kristy's, the local family-style, middle-America, if-we-were-a-chain-we'd-be-Denny's restaurant, and I thought that went pretty well, although there was a lot of spoon- and straw-throwing and general misbehavior. But on the way home Baby A began to scream at the top of his lungs, that really out of control screaming, something about "my cah!" and we couldn't get him to quiet down. By the time we got home, Rocket Boy and I were at the end of our respective ropes, and we had a brief fight and then I took the boys out for a stroller ride while he did some repairs on the gate.

It was a little less than 90 degrees and the wind was blowing again -- this has been the windiest spring! Maybe the wind will stop on Monday, when it officially becomes summer. I pushed the stroller valiantly down the street, and as I pushed I started to think that instead of just getting in my car and driving back to Boulder (one of my regular fantasies), maybe I could put the twins up for adoption. Rocket Boy would agree, because he has trouble dealing with them for an hour, much less fulltime if I were to leave. Maybe I could turn them in to foster care. However, I believe you can only do that if your children are newborn infants or if you run a meth lab. In Nebraska you used to be able to give up your children at any age, but they changed that, because people were turning in their teenagers.

It's so frustrating to think that when the boos are teenagers, I will MISS this time in their lives! I already desperately miss their babyhood, and at the time I thought that was the hardest thing I'd ever lived through. (And it was, because I hadn't yet lived through the twos.)

By the time we got home I had changed my mind about the adoption thing. But it was a close call.

Pee poop and nap driving

Well, things are getting back to normal after Rocket Boy's most recent trip to Colorado. He was gone Thursday-Tuesday (got back at 3 am Tuesday morning, ouch), and we all survived, barely.

It does scare me when he goes out of town, because what if something were to happen to us? What if I got hit by a car while walking across the Albertson's parking lot and had to go to the hospital? What would happen to the boo bears? I have literally no one I could call in the area. The closest person would be my niece, 2.5 hours away, and she's pretty busy, might not be able to drop everything and drive to Ridgecrest to babysit.

Anyway, Rocket Boy is home again, so I can stop worrying about that for a while. We both had a good night's sleep last night and feel human again, or nearly. It helps that it is not so hot, only in the low 90s.

Potty training is proceeding apace. It's interesting trying to train twins, because they aren't equally ready. Baby B is very into it; Baby A is not. Baby B happily wears "pull-ups," but Baby A cries at anything but a diaper. If I only had one child, say Baby B, he'd probably be trained by now, but if that one child were Baby A, we probably wouldn't even be starting for another 6 months or more.

Their term for going potty is "pee poop," which seems very descriptive. This morning they were watching me get dressed in the bathroom and Baby B suddenly said "Pee poop!" I assumed he already had a full diaper, but I said OK, you can do pee poop, and pulled off his pajama bottoms and his diaper, which was wet. Baby B sat down on his potty and actually went poop. That's the first time. I was so proud, I shouted for Rocket Boy, who came running. "What is it?" he cried in alarm. "Look!" I said, displaying Baby B's achievement.

The look on his face. Should have had the camera ready.

Pause for gratuitous cute photo:



To be honest, I'd like to fast forward a year or two until this potty training business is over. Not my favorite aspect of child raising so far. But then I think: what about teaching them to drive? Surely that will be worse. Let's see, that'll be in about 13 years. Rocket Boy and I will both be senile, of course, so perhaps my niece will be less busy by then and can come up to Ridgecrest and teach them.

Actually, Baby A will probably not want to learn to drive a car, only a "mo-cocko," which is his word for motorcycle.

I've been doing a lot of driving recently, because the only way I can get the twins to take a nap in the afternoon is to take them on a drive. Baby A falls asleep as we back out of our driveway; Baby B is snoozing about 10 minutes later. That means I have to drive for at least 100 minutes so that they can both sleep for 90 minutes. Fortunately Ridgecrest has some nice empty highways nearby, very scenic. On Sunday I took Highway 395 to Olancha, then turned around and came back -- about 100 miles total, a little less than 2 hours. On Tuesday I took 395 south to the Garlock Road, over to Highway 14, then north on 14 to 395 to Pearsonville, turned around, and went back to Ridgecrest -- about 85 miles total, maybe an hour and 45 minutes.

As I drove (while trying not to take a nap myself) I calculated that it costs me $10-12 in gas to do one of these trips. Compare that to the cost of daycare, where they do still take naps: about $44 for the two of them per afternoon. Of course, when they're at daycare I can do whatever I want, whereas when we are on a drive, I have to be driving. Oh, and then there's wear and tear on the car.

Speaking of wear and tear, today I had to take my car to the tire place, because my left rear tire was quite low. I bought a new set of tires from this place just a few months ago. Anyway, it turned out the tire had a screw in it, so they fixed it for $10 (got to figure that into the cost of those drives). I'm very glad the tire didn't burst when I was out nap-driving yesterday. But at least Rocket Boy could have come and rescued us.

Parental influences

Another day, another trip to the park. Thursday is library day, but the library is across the street from the best park in Ridgecrest, so I always have to do a bit of negotiating. Boo bears like the library pretty well, but they LOVE the park ("pah!"). I've learned that the best way to make library day work is to go to the park FIRST, get them tired of it (this is all theoretical, they don't get tired of it), and then go to the library.

I was thinking maybe that nice family, new to Ridgecrest, would be there again. But no. Maybe 8 or so stay-at-home mom types and their flocks of children were there instead. And they all knew each other. I think it was some kind of church mothers group, because I heard references to "Sunday." No one spoke to me, no one acknowledged my presence. The twins attempted to play with the other children and were greeted with hostile stares. Eventually a very little boy tried to take one of our shovels and that led to interaction (Baby A shouting at him: "Mine! Mine!"). It was 90 degrees again, but the wind was blowing roughly 150 miles an hour. Oh yeah, another typical day at the park in Ridgecrest.

After about 45 minutes I insisted we leave and go to the library, an unpopular suggestion. But we went, and we got lots of books, and we didn't scream TOO much.



Couldn't resist -- this photo is from exactly a year ago! But I'm still pushing them into the library in this stroller, and they still look just about this thrilled.

I was thinking about how parents impose their own interests on children. For example, I love to read, so I force my two-year-olds to go to the library. My nephew and his wife, who are big badminton players, are trying to get their kids interested in the sport (they're 3 and 1). Not sure how that's going.

I also really love to make jigsaw puzzles, and that's a pastime I've pretty much been denied since the twins started crawling and pulling themselves up on things. Sometimes I open the cupboard where the puzzles are kept and run my eyes longingly over the titles. I have puzzles I haven't even opened yet. Someday the boos will be more mature and we'll all make puzzles together as a family. And the next day they'll start high school and never speak to me again. But anyway.

To encourage them to mature early (in this respect) I keep buying harder and harder puzzles for them to do. A couple of weeks ago I bought them a big puzzle at Target: it's wood, but the pieces really fit together, it's not a baby puzzle where each piece has its own separate hole. The boos are WAY too young for this puzzle, but they adore it. They call it "ammals" (the picture is of farm animals) and always want me to get it down from the shelf for them. Then I have to make it, because they can't. They have learned how a few pieces go together, but their hands aren't agile enough to do the actual fitting.

I know I'm not supposed to compare my children! But Baby B is proving to be slightly better at jigsaw puzzles. Baby A refuses to learn the concept of an edge piece. Also, when I show him how 2 pieces fit together, he takes them apart and puts a wrong piece there instead. And he has no concept of matching the colors of pieces. Baby B is better at all these things. Interestingly, I am better at puzzles than Rocket Boy -- who is, let's face it, a rocket scientist. I'm wondering now if Baby B, who also loves dolls and stuffed animals, might have a mind a little more like mine, and Baby A, who loves anything with a wheel, might have a mind a little more like his dad. Time will tell.

Later I made mini muffins (lemon poppy seed, but I left out the poppy seeds and put one blueberry in each mini muffin instead), thus imposing my love of baked goods and fruit on the babies. And after dinner we went out to see the tortoises, further enforcing my choice of favorite reptile on them. At what point will they rebel and say "No! We like lizards better!" Time will tell.

My new life as a housewife

Well, my job of 11+ years has finally ended. I am no longer "employed outside the home" as they say. No one is paying me now. Nothing I did yesterday or today earned any money. I am useless, really. Parasitic. Just the diaper changer around here.

Speaking of diapers, we have officially started potty training, as of yesterday. That's part of my new job. We are using the "potty practice" method, which means I put them on their potties every couple of hours and hope something happens. So far only Baby A has "done anything" on the potty, and I'm sure it was an accident. He didn't even know it had happened. Baby B desperately wants to do it, and tries and tries, but so far no luck.



Sorry, couldn't resist. This photo shows them fighting over the frog potty, so now we have 2 frog potties and they fight over whose is whose (they are identical).

Being a housewife means doing lots of errands, some of them fun. This morning of course we voted, and that was very fun, and then after visiting the post office, we went across to the park, since it was early still and not too hot (maybe 90). There was one other family there: a mom, 2 older boys, and a toddler. The little boy was interested in the boos' sand toys, so he came over to inspect them, and then the whole family came over too and sat by us. This is quite unusual for Ridgecrest. When we first moved here I would go to the park and smile longingly at other families, wishing someone would talk to me. Now here someone finally was. And guess what? They moved to Ridgecrest a week ago!

What do you say to someone who just moved here? If they had seemed unhappy I could have shared a lot of negative knowledge, but they didn't seem unhappy. They seemed delighted to be here. Also they seemed really nice. I kind of wanted to ask their names, invite them over, try to make friends, but I held back. Maybe they're true Ridgecrestians in training. I shouldn't interfere with the process.

Being a housewife means being home when repairmen come. So today the boos and I were here in the afternoon when the repair guy came to fix the A/C. Turned out it had a broken "contactor" which he replaced for $117. I don't know what a contactor is, but thought Rocket Boy could explain it to me when he came home. Sadly, Rocket Boy has no idea what a contactor is either. Maybe the repair guy made it up? But the A/C didn't work before and now it does, and the repair guy had to climb on our roof in 100-degree heat with the wind blowing, so $117 is fine.

This is something that has always puzzled me about Ridgecrest: all these appliances on the roof. Furnace, swamp cooler, and A/C. In an area with terrible winds and searing summer temps, repair guys are always having to go up on the roof. It's not just us, it's everyone. There must be some reason, but it's elusive.

Being a housewife means cleaning the kitchen and making dinner (tonight we had frozen pasta, frozen peas, and applesauce -- does that count?). I have to admit I don't like housework and am mostly pretty bad at it. This is why we have a house cleaner come every 2 weeks. But I recognize that housework has to get done -- some of it by me and some of it by whomever. Boo bears should have a nice home.

Being a housewife in Ridgecrest means hanging the laundry on the line and having it dry in minutes. It means picking leaves for the tortoises. It means putting sweet little boys into their pajamas, reading them stories, and kissing them goodnight.

I can do this for a while. And then we'll figure out what comes next.

Surviving summer

OK, so it's summer! Yowza, that happened fast. One day it was oh, maybe 82 or something, and suddenly it's 105 every day. I remember what this feels like, but I don't exactly remember how I survived it last year. Except -- oh yeah, I remember -- last year I went to northern California for the month of July.

Summer in Ridgecrest makes you think you've suddenly developed Type 2 diabetes -- you're so thirsty, you just want to drink and drink and drink. What a bad time for me to give up diet soda. But I had to, ya know, it's just not good for you, and I was up to 3 or 4 cans a day. So now we're trying to come up with alternatives. My current favorite ideas are very light lemonade (maybe 1/4 strength) and homemade mint iced tea. I'm going to do some experimenting.

The thing about summer is that you want to get up very early and do things before it gets hot, and you want to stay up very late and do things after it cools down, and so when exactly are you supposed to sleep? Why, in the afternoon, of course. Right after lunch is a good time for a nap. Except that the boo bears don't do that anymore. I say "Lunch is over, time for a nighty-night nap," and I go in my room and lie down on the bed, and they come in too, and throw things at me. They climb on top of me and hit me, they fall off the bed and scream, they turn my bedside light on and off, they bring in their toy school bus and make it play its stupid song ("Stop and go, stop and go, off to school, let's take it slow...") over and over, and when I get mad and yell at them (remember, all the childcare experts say you should never get mad and yell), they listen briefly, laugh, and do it all over again.

It is going to be a LONG summer.

But we want to enjoy the summer and do fun things. Friday night was the liberal salon thing again, and since we hadn't gone to that in months we decided we would definitely go -- except that we couldn't get a babysitter. (This is a constant problem.) But we really wanted to go, so what the heck, we brought the boos with us. We ate dinner before we went, so they wouldn't be cranky.

We drove out to the house around 7 pm. It was still really hot, in the 90s. The house was on one of the major streets in town, Las Flores, but west of Downs. I've learned that almost anything can happen once you go west of Downs. We parked on the street and hiked, literally, up to the house, which was already full of liberals eating potluck. We quickly noted that the house was full of breakable objects, so we zoomed out to the backyard. What a backyard! A huge swimming pool. A lawn. An enormous chicken/goose/pigeon coop. A big vegetable garden. A tennis court. A large undeveloped space. It was such an amazing property. Rocket Boy kept saying it didn't seem like we were in Ridgecrest, but really it did. For one thing it was 95 degrees at 7:15 pm. For another thing, the less developed parts of the yard were bare ground. It was still Ridgecrest. But a very amazing part of it.

We didn't have a very good time at the salon, because we had to chase the boo bears continuously. We didn't get to have a conversation with anyone, and more than one person looked a bit askance at us (I think you're not supposed to bring children). But what the heck, we got out for a while. I wish we had made a better impression on the host, though, because I would like to be invited back to swim in that pool.

Today we went to the swimming pool on base and that was pretty fun. They've finally opened up the toddler wading pool again, and we were the only ones using it. It has a canopy over the pool so although the air is hot, you don't have the blazing sun beating down on you.

Then after a quick dinner at Denny's, we went home to Get Something Done, the temperature having dropped (barely) below 100. I was going to work on the second tortoise burrow while Rocket Boy weeded the front yard. But then I had a brainstorm: I have strep throat. For the second time in a row. I am going to TAKE IT EASY FOR ONE BLOOMING EVENING. So I set the boo bears up to play with their water table and then I decided to take the tortoises for an outing. I brought them out of their pen to another part of the yard, dragged a patio chair over, and sat and watched them. Well, OK, for a minute or two I sat and watched them, in between running errands for Rocket Boy, and putting Baby B's shoes back on, over and over again, and kissing owies, and all that. But I didn't dig the burrow. Rocket Boy dug it instead, very efficiently.



At first they were very sweet, the two torteels, walking around and eating interesting new weeds. But then the shoving started. Remember, these tortoises have lived together for maybe 50 years, and currently they are sharing a narrow, dark burrow -- we thought, happily. But put them together in a large backyard and they fight! And here is the result of the fight:



Yep, the aggressive one managed to knock the peace-loving tortoise on its back. I was horrified. These are FEMALES. This is not supposed to happen. I righted the fallen tortoise and moved them much further apart. That made it harder to keep an eye on them, but I managed not to lose either one.

Eventually I realized that the reason they kept trying to hide under piles of leaves was that it was bedtime (the tortoise equivalent of rubbing one's eyes), so I put them back in their pen, and before you could say Jack Robinson, if you had been so inclined, they were both down in the burrow. Where I suppose the mean one again started trying to overturn the wimpy one. I don't know. The mysteries of desert tortoises are many.

And now I must go to bed, because I'm supposed to go on a walk at 6:30 tomorrow morning. Oh yeah, that'll happen.

End of May reading update

Here we are deep into June already and I haven't finished with May. Blame it on my second round of strep throat, which was diagnosed today. "Sucks to be you," the doctor said to me, pleasantly. I felt very well understood.

Anyway, in May I read 8 books -- almost 9, but couldn't quite finish the last one on May 31st, so it'll be in the June list. Here's the list:

36. Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading by Maureen Corrigan. An enjoyable discussion of the books she loves and how they've influenced her life. She and I like many of the same writers, such as Barbara Pym and Dorothy L. Sayers. I also loved her analysis of the "Beany Malone" books.
37. Potty Training for Dummies by Diane Stafford and Jennifer Shoquist. Read for obvious reasons, but what a terrible book! So badly written and even more badly edited. An embarrassment to the "Dummies" series and of no help at all to anyone.
38. A Darker Place by Laurie R. King. Not a mystery, one of her stand-alone books. About a former cult member who infiltrates cults for the FBI and attempts to diffuse them. Like all Laurie R. King books, it meanders and doesn't tie up loose ends very well, but I still enjoyed it.
39. The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich. This is the book she wrote before Shadow Tag, and it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. More her usual style. It was very good, but didn't grab me like Shadow Tag.
40. Thursday Next: First Among Sequels by Jasper Fforde. Thank goodness I'm finally done with this series! This one upset me in many ways. I'm glad I don't have to read any more about Thursday Next (until Fforde writes the next book in the series).
41. The Seal Wife by Kathryn Harrison. Such an odd little book and for a while I was not happy with it. It's about a National Weather Service employee who goes to Alaska in 1915 and falls in love with a native woman. One of the reviews I read of it said they wished there had been less about his weather service work and more about the romance -- I of course was hoping for more meteorology. The TMI details of his longing for the woman after she goes away just really left me cold. But it has a neat ending and all in all I decided I liked this book.
42. Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. Scottoline is a popular writer of legal thrillers, so I thought I'd try this one, which some reviews said was her best. And now I know I don't ever have to read anything else by her. Just awful.
43. The Meaning of the Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse by George Peknik. No, I am not padding the list, it's not just a coffee table book, there's a lot of text. And what bad text. I must remember that coffee table books are not meant to be read.

As you can see, I only have to read 7 books in June to reach 50 by the halfway mark, but I'll try to do better than that, since you never know when you'll hit a slow month. For instance, I feel like I'm hitting one now. Or maybe it's just the strep. Or the heat. Welcome to summer in Ridgecrest.