Once a gym rat, always a gym rat.

A week ago I went to the gym with my friend on a guest pass. It had been quite a while since I have set foot in a gym, but that didn't stop me from going full throttle on some of the machines. So after 20 minutes on the Stairmaster on "fat burner" mode, and 20 minutes of weight machines at the levels I USED to do eons ago when I actually lifted weights, I was feeling really good, but worried I may be pretty sore in 24-48 hours. Much to my surprise, I had very little muscle soreness at all.

Fast forward one week to 36 hours after tournament style competitions in Wii bowling, pool, darts, ping pong and washers - all fairly non strenuous games - and I have a sore right arm (triceps)... But I'm NOT competitive; the kids get that from their dad!! :)

Economics 101

Gabrielle has asked before (usually after she has been told that money doesn't grow on trees) why "they" can't just print more money. I tried my best to explain the principals of supply and demand. And that if "they" printed more money, then everyone's money would be worth less. And that just printing more money is called counterfeiting, and it's illegal.



As an example, I tried using 10 gold coins in the entire school (1,050 kids). Kids would be willing to give or trade, alot of something to have one of the gold coins. But if there were 10,000 gold coins in the school, they wouldn't be as rare and it would be no big deal if you had a gold coin, because everyone would have several gold coins.



Tyler: "Yeah, like when I get the best Silly Bands for my mozzarella cheese."

Mom: "You trade your lunch for Silly Bands?"

Tyler, sheepish grin: "Yeah! I got three Bands for just one piece!"

It's the little things that make me happy

I know this is silly, but when I went into the downstairs bathroom this morning and washed my hands, the "ghost" soap dispenser ran out of hand soap. Today. On the day after Halloween. That means I don't have to set it on the counter draining into the "fall leaves" soap dispenser, and then clean up the mess when it inevitably falls over. Yay. Made my day :)

Why friends stay friends...

The house phone rang at 7 something this morning, and caller ID said "cell phone" and displayed a number that looked familiar but that I couldn't immediately place. ( I was not yet done with my first cup of coffee; remember it was 7 something). I picked up and said
"Hello?" and heard
"No that's not going to work because I'm..." and I interrupted with
"Hello?" thinking I was overhearing a conversation that was to someone in the caller's house, and again heard
"I got your text. That's not going to work. I can't do that because I'm just now leaving..." so I again interrupted
"MARY, this is Lori and I don't know what you're talking about." pregnant pause...

"Wait, who's this?"

"This is Lori."

"Oh, how did you get on my phone?"

And this is why I love my friends. Just as I am feeling so frazzled like there is nothing I can do right (or better yet get done at all), I realize I am not alone in being overextended, overtired, overworked, and all those other adjectives! Thank you Mary :)

Things were going too smoothly...

So I woke up to Tyler knocking on the bedroom door and saying "Can we come in?". And in he and Evie walk, both grinning. Evie says "Do you notice" as I realize that she now has a vampire spike of hair in the middle of her forehead. She had asked for bangs, and we had not yet made it to the hair salon, so apparently she asked her big brother to help her out, and HE DID. When I asked what on earth he was thinking, he really didn't have an answer. But he was proud of his work, and Evie was happy with her bangs; it was just mom who was upset. (And by the way, dad was laughing .) So I cut off the spike at least, and we will see how long she is happy with this mess...

One more thing to ponder...

Gabrielle, Tyler, and their friend RJ have been talking daily about building their own lightsabers. I've been half listening to these rumblings, hearing talk about shampoo bottle handles vs sturdy cardboard tubing. Okay, I'm good with this so far.

Then Gabrielle started asking about cutting mirrors into strips so that the "light source" would shine through the "crystal" and reflect off the mirrors. Not liking the way this sounds so much, as this most definitely involves an adult (read ME) cutting these mirrors. Not to mention if the lightsaber does at some point fall apart, we have shards of broken mirrors to contend with.

As if that's not bad enough, today she comes home with a book: "Experimenting With Batteries, Bulbs and Wires". Seriously. She wants to build her own light source. Are you kidding me??! I was envisioning glow sticks, or flashlights. She's ten. And that sounds like PHYSICS. (Whose kid IS she anyway--doesn't she know I HATED physics? Grampa A if you are laughing at me from up there, YOU'RE NOT FUNNY!)

Does it make me a bad mom that I want to squelch the scientific experimentation and just go buy her a mini MagLite??

Live Free or Die

At the dinner table (Seems many of my posts come from conversations at our dinner table) we were talking about "mottos". I asked the kids if they knew the state motto for New Hampshire, where they spend a good amount of time each summer. They didn't, so I told them it was "Live free or die". They pondered this for a few minutes and Tyler said "That means they don't believe in slavery." And I explained that it was more than that, that they believed strongly in personal freedoms and they would rather die than have their rights taken away. They all looked at me kind of blankly, and then Gabrielle said, "That's harsh"!