Chin-ken

I'm in the kitchen cutting up chicken for dinner. Lillian comes in and very excitedly starts saying "chinnnn, chinnnnn" and tries to grab my hand. "Chicken?" I guess. "Chinnnn, chinnn" "Yes, I'm cutting up chicken," I say. "I can't hold your hand, my hands are all chicken-y." Frustrated, she exits the kitchen and tries Tyler. "Chinnnnn Chinnnn." He replies, "yes, mom's making chicken." This is not working. She starts sounding desperate, "CHinnnn!" "Uh-huh, chicken."

She changes her tactic. "Wipe," she tells Tyler. ('Wipe' meaning Kleenex.) He reaches over and gets her a Kleenex. She hands it right back to him. "Wipe." "I just gave you a wipe," Tyler says, and tries to give it back. She stamps her foot. "CHINNNNN." At this point, Lillian begins jabbing her finger at Tyler's chin. "You want me to wipe my chin?" Yes. Tyler gives his chin a cursory wipe and hands the Kleenex to Lillian. This is not enough. "Chinnnn," she says and gives the wipe back to him.

Tyler begins to wonder what is going on, and peeks at himself in the mirror. Sure enough, there on his chin is a smear of chocolate left from a chocolate chip cookie he ate 10 minutes ago.

Aw yeah

I've done it again

A long time ago, I all of a sudden couldn't hear out of one of my ears. Turns out, I had something called eustachian tube dysfunction. Who knew there was such a thing? (Besides Caitlin, who, if I remember correctly, had it in both ears around the same time I had it.)

Then again, my ears clogged up and I couldn't hear, but that time, it turned out to be just wax.

Then, you may remember, this last February, I pulled an intercostal which made it really painful to breathe.

And now, to add to my list of strange maladies, last night, I'm pretty sure I pulled my sternohyoid muscle. It was really quite awful and very scary. (Skip the rest of this paragraph if you are squeamish.) Right after I put Lillian to bed, I started feeling queasy. No big deal, I just went and assumed my position in the bathroom. What followed was the most frightening vomiting session that I've ever had. I was heaving so badly that I couldn't breathe, and I was starting to panic so I was trying to call Tyler to save me somehow, but I was choking and couldn't call out and couldn't breathe. It was awful.

When it was safely all over, Tyler rushed in to see if I was OK. (I figured out early on that he wasn't ever going to stand and hold my hair back. Ever.) I was shaken but I was OK except for the fact that it felt like I had something stuck in my throat, like a walnut. This was odd as I had had lentil soup for dinner. I drank some water, but it was still there. I ate a popsicle, but it was still there. Then it started hurting. It hurt to swallow. I started think all sorts of things, like my vitamin from the afternoon and somehow lodged itself in my throat. Or that I had accidentally swallowed a walnut and it was coming back to haunt me. As I was attempting to fall asleep, my ideas got crazier and crazier, like I had torn something and I now had a tracheoesophageal fistula and my stomach contents were spilling into my lungs and I was going to get pneumonia or suffocate by morning. Or I'd imagine I could feel my lodged vitamin slip quietly down my throat and into my stomach. I'd test it by swallowing again. Nope, still there. I had dreams of going to the emergency room and the doctor taking forceps and reaching down my throat to pull out all sorts of things: crayons, a mouse, the cursed vitamin. I talked myself out of anything really serious as I could breathe just fine. I also talked myself out of the vitamin/walnut(/mouse/crayon) theory as I could swallow OK, excepting the pain.

As I was eating my cereal this morning, I decided on the pulled muscle. Having consulted my anatomy book, I've decided on the the sternohyoid. It seems to be at the exact place that it hurts.

Assignments

Our graduation/going away party is still on for the 21st. As everyone sounded willing to help out with the party, I went ahead and made assignments. If you cannot, or don't want to, bring something, please let me know so I can figure something else out. We're expecting around 35 adults and eating children (not children for eating... but children who are going to eat) so this is what Tyler and I came up with:

Marti: s'mores paraphernalia
Dick & Jeri: 2-3 12 packs of soda and 1 thing of juice boxes
Sanchez family: around 25 hot dogs
Plummer family: around 25 hot dogs
Anne & Aaron: around 25 buns
Andrew: around 25 buns
Mark & Darlene: 2-3 12 packs of soda and 1 thing of juice boxes
Claire and assorted Gregorys (Gregories?): Plates and forks
Thomas family: napkins
Liz and guest (Tyler and I think Jacqueline (which is how spell check thinks you should spell her name, but I have no idea) should come): ice
Eastburn family: salad
Mike: salad
Isabelle: salad
Myriah and Tara: staking out the spot

We tried to assign people who were coming out of town stuff that they could get at the store real quick. Also, I guess worrying about not having enough chairs wasn't enough as Tyler is now worried we won't have enough salads, so if you're feeling generous, you could bring a salad too.

Remember: bring your own chairs.

Central Coast

Everyone keeps asking if I'm excited to move to Arizona. I'm excited to be done with school. I'm excited that Tyler will have a grown-up job and we can afford things we have heretofore gone without (like, real health insurance). I'm excited to have a washer and dryer in my house and not down two flights of steps in the car port. I feel OK about Arizona, I'm just really, really sad to leave San Luis Obispo. I was thinking the other day that this is one of the places that people save their whole lives to be able to retire here. The weather is great, it's green for a lot of the year without having too much rain, it's close to the beach, it's close to the mountains. There's outdoorsy things, there's artsy things, the people are really nice, it's got a small-town feeling without really being that small of a town.

Anyway, so I started thinking of Central Coast-type things that I want to do before I left here. The list is pretty short so far:

1. Eat at Sylvester's is Los Osos. Sylvester's is a hole-in-the-wall hamburger place (seriously: it only has four tables, two of which are two seaters) that makes the best hamburgers on the central coast. Aside from the fact they only give you two napkins a piece (the burgers they serve require maybe 20 napkins) so you have to ask for more and the waitress always gives you a dirty look, it's really fabulous. (We ate there for dinner tonight, so I guess I could check this one off.)
2. Visit Big Sur. I've driven through Big Sur, which is about an hour north of here, and looked at the trees and thought, "wow, this is pretty," but have never stopped. Probably, I should go there at least once before I move away.
3. Have/attend a corn feed. This mission will be accomplished in a few weeks.
4. Eat a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie from Cowboy Cookie. You get a sizeable cookie and a glass of milk for $2. And they're the best cookies ever.

I would say "visit Hearst Castle" but I've been there and (sorry Myriah) I thought it was lame. I would also want to go hike Bishop's Peak once more, but Lillian hates the backpack and I can't carry her anyway, and I can't barely even climb the two flights of steps to my apartment, so how am I going to hike a mountain?

Any other ideas?