Fordham Miller Fare

how i spent my weekend

i was blessed this weekend by being given a ticket to the falcon ridge folk festival (thanks liz!), a ride (thanks dianne!) and a pass by my family (thanks!) to go alone all of saturday day and night.  it was tremendously fun and relaxing to have the time to myself.  there is so much going on at the festival - three different music stages, and a wonderful funky midway with wares and massages and tons of incredible food choices.  i dozed and listened and ate and listened, and woke up and listened.  i made it all the way to the closing act, marton sexton, and even though i was sleepy it was well worth staying up.  and with the help of a cell phone call to bill (thank you weather.com!), i managed to avoid the one storm of the day, safely tucked away in my tent.

sunday, bill and the kids came out to meet me.  i was all recharged and ready to shepherd the kids along in whatever they wanted to do (there are many kids activities at falcon ridge) as i had had my alone time, and plus i was carrying a walkman on which i could catch whatever was playing on the main stage.  morgan and i played with those funky hippie catchy stick thingies, and maddy learned to lanyard weave at the kids art tent, and i got them settled for a couple of great shows.  and then... this happened...

that's the view from outside.  but we were inside the kids performance tent, where many of the adults, myself included, were trying to hold down the roof of the tent in an effort to keep it from collapsing, like the main concession tent did, as seen in the videos above (exterior) and (interior) below...

oddly enough, things in the kids tent were much calmer, probably due to the fact that (1) all us grownups were trying to put on a good show for all the kids, and (2) our tent did not actually collapse.

please stand by. we are experiencing technical difficulties...

on the few occasions i have tried to run over to the computer and file a quick post, i am envariably dogged by technological mayhem.  internet too slow, computer hung up on memory hogging virus detection software, or the computer just plain crashes.

anyway, where was i?  oh yes.  lice.  the post below was written in early march.  i managed to resolve the bug problem with my own head in two easy treatments, but inexplicably madeleine's remains a constant battle.  i simply can not understand the tenacity of these creatures.  no matter what i do, they come back, after weeks of checking and seeing absolutely nothing.  here's what i have NOT done:  i have not tried mayonnaise; i have not tried olive oil; i have not tried the electronic Robi Comb; i have not tried combing through her entire head every single day of the week, which by the way takes an hour at a minimum, and washing her sheets every day, and cleaning the entire house every day, and getting rid of all hairbrushes and headbands and hats and all whatnot.  i HAVE tried Rid, cetaphil (the Rid plus cetaphil combination worked on Morgan), Resultz (which cured me), and just plain combing on an every two to three days schedule.  i clearly will NEVER get rid of them, so i might as well just get used to it!  i'm going to try next the "Head Lice to Dead Lice" program, which involves olive oil, and is meant for 'persistent infestations.'  and i promise not to bore you with any of the details anymore.  ugh, on top of everything is the tediousness of it all!

head lice. they're not just for kids anymore.

that's right.  after getting ready to declare madeleine yet again free of the creepy crawlies (ha!), i came down with them myself.

the good news?  that after the third go around, i purchase a product called Resultz i found on the internet.  it has been approved in Canada, but not here, but was easily (although somewhat expensively) purchased through the internet.  i used it most recently to treat madeleine, and was delighted with the fact that (1) it is not a neurtoxin, and one needn't call poison control should it get into one's eyes, and (2) it does not require the massively labor intensive approach of the cetaphil program.  the active ingredient is apparently found in everyday cosmetics, including lipstick, which can either make you say, 'a delousing agent?  in my lipstick?' or 'thank god there's something you can just pour on your head and wash off without major risk of chemical exposure.

i won't bore you with the details - oh, okay i will.  it works by dissolving the waxy coating on the lice, thereby dehydrating them.  think of it as a kind of citrasolve for the insect world.  saturate the hair from roots to tip, wait ten minutes, and shampoo out.  it is a pretty oily substance, so my experience has taught me that at least two if not three shampoos in a row are necessary to get the hair really clean again.

my googling shenanigans have earned me enough of a reputation that i ended up selling a bottle of the beloved lotion to a friend in the late evening hours.  thankfully i thought to re-order - just in case.  here's hoping this stuff does the trick.  if not, i'll be emulating twiggy for my next haircut.

winning the battles. losing the war.

lice.

we successfully avoided them for 8 years.  then in september it started.  the 3rd day of school i found lice on both kids.  so i treated.  and combed.  and washed the sheets.  and banished the stuffed animals.  and combed.  and retreated.  and then we were done.

i initially treated with the over-the-counter formula - fun with neurotoxins! - but after my usual googling i decided that for all forthcoming treatments i would go with the decidedly less toxic nuvo protocol.  it goes like this: wash hair.  dry hair. apply 16 ounces of cetaphil gentle face cleanser to hair.  comb excess cetaphil cleanser out of hair.  blow dry hair.  all in all, it takes about an hour and a half to do maddy, about half that time to do morgan.

then, mid-way through november, maddy reminded me to check her hair, because lice had been recently identified in class again.  and right off the bat i found one.  augh!  so, i treated, and retreated, and combed, and examined.  this time around, not so many, and morgan didn't get it, and by the day before thanksgiving, i declared us yet again, lice free!  i swear, two months ago we were lice free.

tonight, maddy complained of her head itching.  she has a recent scar on her scalp from a bad fall she took (4 staples) so i thought maybe that was it.  but the scar also happens to be where the critters like to hang out most.  i couldn't find any of the critters themselves, but i found one egg, and then another.  at first i thought they were old stragglers from the earlier bouts. but then i found another.  and another.  and you know, where there's smoke....

so tomorrow i am in for it again.  washing, drying, shampooing, combing, blah blah blah.  i'm just praying nobody else gets 'em (so far it hasn't happened, but...knock on wood).

the blizzard that wasn't OR wintertime, and the shovelin's easy

3.75 inches is the official total accumulation here.  at 11 a.m., my mother-in-law called from staten island, where they were snowed in.  i looked out the window and saw the plows in action on an already clear road.  with our subaru, we were hardly housebound.

i spent the whole day bracing for the storm, wondering if the power would go out, thinking about all the shoveling that lay ahead.  what we had instead was a steady but light snowfall throughout the day, ending up with a reasonable amount of white stuff on the ground.

the snow was mericfully light, so the shoveling was easy. i got out and did a little x-country skiing, and it was lovely.  but i was expecting this MASSIVE storm, so everything was just a little off.  i kept checking the weather channel, and could see that we here in amherst were on the periphery of the storm, with the really serious action to the south and east of us.  i'm glad it didn't skip us completely, because i like a little...actually, a lot...of white stuff with my winter.

Halloween is sooooooo over

Morgan painted a small pumpkin at preschool (not pictured), and in the two weeks before Halloween, he grew increasingly attached to it.  He insisted on having it on the table at breakfast, and then bedside him before we went to sleep.  Since he doesn't have a bedside table, we put it in the vacant basement of the kids' dollhouse, where he could look at it from his pillow.

A few days after Halloween, he came out of his room and announced, "Mama, I think we should put my pumpkin in the garbage."  Inspecting the dollhouse, it looked like something from Crime Scene Investigators: Vegetarians.  The bottom of the pumpkin had fused with the dollhouse's wood floor.  I managed to scrape most it off with a green scrubby, but the diluted bleach spray didn't quite get the entire stain, so I suppose I'll have to do what Martha would do and crochet a little throw rug to cover it up.  As you can see from the picture above, I also need to relegate our official jackolantern to the compost heap.

The kids had a fine time trick-or-treating, Morgan as a wizard and Maddy as a fairy-witch (you can't quite see the little green fairy wings on her back, but they're there).  Bill made a point of expanding their route this year, ostensibly so we could feel less guilty helping ourselves to their stash.  We're almost done now, just a couple of tootsie rolls and milk duds to go.

For those who have been checking in, sorry I haven't posted much lately.  I'm trying to get back on the horse, and thinking about trying out Flickr for my photos.  Have you missed me?

UPDATE: Check out my flickr photo stream to the right.  I think I need to tweak the colors tho'.

HOLY *@#$%!!!!!!

Lightning struck!  Our tree!  It blew the plastic coating off the kiddy swing.  It blew a hole in the ground.  It hit our electrical lines.  It set off our electric smoke detectors.  It flipped the circuits in the kitchen, and blew out our tenant's TV and DVD player.  Thankfully, we all survived unscathed.

There has always been tension in my relationship with Bill re: my tendency toward hypervigilance (car seats, smoke detectors, stray balloons, diving into murky water).  We had just come back from a 5-day stay in the Finger Lakes region of NY.  It was quite clear that we were at the epicenter of a raging thunderstorm.  Bill and the kids were taking their time getting into the house, but I of course was totally freaked and hunched over and shoving madly to get inside and close the door.  As I literally shoved him out the way, Bill snapped at me to chill out in serious irritation at my supposedly irrational behavior.  He tried to go out to fetch more luggage from the car.  "Are you INSANE?" I shouted.  I won out, but there remained much tension at my general level of hysteria.  Then about 5 minutes later, as I busied myself about the house and tried to appear calm, IT struck.

And I was vindicated.  For now and all eternity.

There was a huge flash and immediate boom.  Amazingly, the kids didn't cry or freak out, probably because there were several extremely close strikes leading up to the big one.  The smoke detectors went off, and Amy came down looking dazed and confused, and the fire department couldn't tell me how to turn off the beeping, and we sort of stumbled around each other wondering if the house was on fire and how to turn off that awful noise.

I think maybe over the next several months, we will all develop superpowers.

Click on the thumbnails for a better view of the wrath.