Mucho Miscellany

1. I think we may have figured out one way to have four kids without going a bit crazy. I am facing a 40 hour work week (1/2 clinicals, 1/2 work) in the fall, and had decided we needed a housecleaner. Instead, we all started cleaning the house together on Saturday mornings...Ar organizes the kids with a to do list, I clean the bathrooms. Of course there is some whining, but the kids all get their allowances upon completion, so it goes pretty well. I am very impressed with how well the kids can do things like mopping, sweeping, and vacuuming.
2. Never doubt the power of the jinx. Yesterday at work, I did the unthinkable. I uttered the word quiet at the end of my shift. It had been such a great day after two weeks of being slammed. You are never to utter the word quiet in a hospital. Within a half an hour - a patient went into a-fib and likely had a heart attack and my other patient had a blood transfusion reaction (which involves a sudden fever of 103 or so and rigors so bad he was shaking his bed).
3. Pandora Radio is one of the best things I have ever found on the web...a friend of Ar's was listening to it at http://www.pandora.com/. You can create your own radio station by picking one or two of your favorite songs and it streams songs they think you will like. I have Clash Radio while Ar has "Wicked Cool" and "Strange Folk". It plays a lot of music I have never heard, but really like - especially songs by decently well known bands that don't normally get played on the radio. I don't know why it thinks I like Belle & Sebastian, though, because I don't.
4. Hooray for summer and farmer's markets. I have a CSA share and am blowing the rest of my grocery budget in an orgy of fruit and berry eating. Yum. Tonight I have been struck by the dessert muse and am going to make a raspbery-peach trifle.
5. Tomorrow Ar and I are taking 3/4 of the kids to Vancouver, WA to sit in on a talk by Tom Sine, who wrote The New Conspirators and started the Mustard Seed House in Seattle. He is one of a handful of people on the forefront of the 'emergent church' that are community oriented and focus on social justice. It is right up the alley of what we have been doing in our home church group. My understanding of the bigger picture is a bit fuzzy...hopefully, we will all learn a bit more. One of my favorite books written about this type of church is Irresistable Revolution by Shane Claiborne.
6. I think we are going to have an outdoor movie night next weekend. We will probably watch Howl's Moving Castle. We are trying to pick a movie that is good for kids and adults - not an easy task.

Jiang & Ling

This weekend, our family hosted Jiang and Ling, two college students from Shangai who are here for a summer course. We were expecting two boys, but we enjoyed them all the same. We have one picture of them, but I happen to be taking off my wetsuit, and the picture will never see the light of day. We took them to the beach and around Olympia and had a generally nice weekend. I wish we had more room to host students more often. The weekend didn't end well, as Isaac has developed 'walking' pneumonia - he hasn't been too sick, but spent most of last night hacking ever ten minutes - Not very fun for either of us. Today, I spent my morning before work with him at the Dr.'s. After a few days of antibiotics, he should be good to go.

Swiss Family Biggerstaff

(or Wynoochee River Escapist Fantasy '08)

Camping Food

We are getting ready to take our 5 day camping trip to the Wynoochee River and I am planning our menu. Does anyone have any favorite camping food recipes to share? Favorite websites? We have a tent trailer and a great campfire spot, so storage is not a problem, although refrigeration is limited. Any suggestions would be great!

I was planning on posting about my very lovely birthday weekend, but this week has overtaken it - and not in a good way. Ariel's work has been a little slow, so I have taken on extra shifts to help out a good friend of mine at work - she has needed to go on leave as her husband dies of cancer. Then Matcha, our six month old kitten got attacked by a neighbor's cat and ended up with an infection and had to stay the night at the vets. I was more than a little suprised how traumatizing it was to have a sick kitten.
Today, my Dad got an official diagnosis of Parkinson's Disease. It was not a huge suprise - about four months ago, I noticed he had a tremor in his right hand (combined with general slowness, and just a sense that something was off) and told him that I was concerned that he had Parkinsons. Parkinsons is a brain disease with a wide range of severity, but most people degenerate until they are no longer able to move on their own within ten years. There are definitely worse diseases to get, especially for an almost seventy year old man, but it is a bad diagnosis. I haven't totally absorbed the reality of it, and I don't think my Dad has either. Everyone pretty much knows these days will come and all I can do is try and be there and be helpful. Someday in the future, I will probably have a better handle on it all.