Phineas and Ferb Changed My Life

Last summer, I had a bad attitude, or maybe I was actually clinically depressed?  It was the heat.  I can handle it being hot in the summer.  I cannot, however, handle it being hot in the spring and fall as well.  If the triple digits would mind their manners and stay in their own season, we wouldn't be so much at odds.

Anyway, things started unraveling fast about September.  I remember one specific day, I was in my car, waiting at a light to turn onto the freeway, and the theme song from Phineas and Ferb came on.  This was the extended, album-release by Bowling for Soup and it's actually called "Today Is Gonna Be A Great Day"

There's a part where they sing:

This could possibly be the best day ever
And the forecast says that tomorrow will likely be a million and six times better.
So make every minute count: jump up, jump in and seize the day.
And let's make sure that in every single possible way...
Today is gonna be a great day.

This was the opposite of what I was doing.  My days were not the best days ever.  I was laying down quietly, waiting to be burned to a crisp by the blinding Arizona sun.  (Seriously, though, there is no cloud cover ever, so the sun is always in my eyes... even if it's cold outside.)  I needed to do something to make sure that in every single possible way my summers would be great.

I sort of snapped that day and announced to Tyler that I was leaving next summer.

"So... we're getting a divorce...?" he asked.
"No no no, I love you.  I'm just not going to live here."
"You're moving forever...?"
"I don't know."
"Where are you going?"
"I don't know.  All I know is that I won't be here."

My first plan was that I would get a job as a summer camp nurse and take my children with me.  Tyler said he could come with us and work remotely during those weeks and watch the kids during the day.  I applied with several camps and got accepted at a camp in Maine.

I didn't end up doing this because it seemed likely that Tyler would get a job in California AND HE DID!  We leave in a few weeks and I am beyond excited and grateful once again to Phineas and Ferb for making the world a better place.

Oh Tyler

So, I was reading a Reddit post asking guys what they thought the most annoying thing about being a girl is.  There were the obvious things: periods, having to look good all the time, hair care, makeup, etc.  But, a surprising number of guys said that they wouldn't like being so physically weak.  A few of them said that they got really freaked out when they discovered just how much stronger they were than their girlfriends/SOs.  Like they were wrestling and they realized that they were using 50% of their strength and easily overpowering the girls' 100%.  The guys went on to say that they'd be afraid of all these strong men who could easily kill them.

I told Tyler because I thought that was interesting.  I've never really dwelt on the fact that I'm physically weak because there's nothing I can do about it.  You can't think too much about how 50% of the population could rape you and then kill you without breaking a sweat or else you'd be paralyzed with fear.

Moving on to the punchline:  Tyler said he didn't think he was that much stronger than me (says the guy who can jump our back fence in a single leap.  If we had a fence that was proportional to my size, it wouldn't be pretty if I tried to get over it.  Also, he ran a half-marathon WITHOUT TRAINING.  I had to train for 5 months before I was even remotely ready.).I suggested we wrestle for real to see how much stronger he was than me, and that I would give it everything I had.

"Why?" he asks.  "Like, if you were in a dark alley or something and a girl jumped on you and was trying to rape you, and you'd have to fight them off."

"Why would I ever want to fight off a girl who's trying to have sex with me?" 

By the way, he pinned me easily.  I'm not sure if I'm glad that he proved my point, or freaked out that he proved my point; he really IS much MUCH stronger than me.

Big Island Day 1

We started out our trip on the Big Island.  We stayed at Hale Kai Hawaii Bed and Breakfast, which I would totally recommend.  Our hosts were gracious, the room was comfortable, and the breakfast was delicious.  Plus, we saw spinning dolphins while we ate.

I didn't get a video, but if you go to the 1 minute mark, that is totally what they were doing.

We woke up at about 3 AM in part because of the time change and in part because of the Coqui frogs that make a whistling sound which sounds remarkably like the Old Spice jingle when you are half asleep.  We laid around until about 5, at which time we decided to do some exploring.  We drove down this scenic by-way and my eyes were burning from all the green.  I kept saying, "imagine! a place where things just grow!  all by themselves!"

We hiked down to this little cove which had black slickery rocks instead of sand.  It was really beautiful and romantic... watching the sunrise on a beautiful deserted beach, until it started pouring rain.  We did not bring an umbrella because I'm not sure we even own one and also, in Arizona, we don't mess around with umbrellas.  We get the whole storm over with in 15 minutes.  None of this misting business or raining on and off for an entire day.  So, even if you didn't want to wait until it blows itself out and you did go out with an umbrella, it would be ripped from your hands and/or comically blow inside out.  The point is that we were soaked.

After we hiked out of the cove, we drove out to Akaka Falls, a National Park which doesn't "open" until 9.  Being an obsessive rule follower, I debated long and hard about jumping the fence to get in.  Being that it was only 7, I finally decided that it wasn't likely that we'd get caught and yelled at.

And then it rained on us some more.

We stopped at a little bakery and got some pastries made out of Hawaiian bread.  Mmmmm.

After we dried out a little, we headed down to Volcano National Park, where we learned all about Madame Pele and her fickle ways.  This is a caldera, formed when a volcano collapses in on itself.  Madame Pele was not feeling very angry, so she was just steaming a little.

We hiked through a lava tube, which was pretty cool.  Our hosts told us that you can easily jump the fence at the end and continue exploring (with the help of a flashlight) so we borrowed one... but it was out of batteries.

The active lava was a 6 mile hike across these lava flows.  It would have been cool, but it also would have taken forever.

This happened in 2003.  Tyler thought it was funny, so he took a picture.

Right after this, we went to the village of Volcano to eat some lunch.  We found a restaurant called Thai Thai and oh. my.  It was so delicious... even the waitress was visibly surprised at how greedily we stuffed our faces.  Turns out, fresh pineapple is really, really yummy.

Once we got back to Hilo and cleaned up a little bit, we tried walking around in the downtown area.  Turns out, Hilo is not much for the nightlife.  All the shops were closed, the few restaurants that were open were kind of slim pickin's and it was only around 7 or 8 on a Friday.  Oh well.

I was kind of amazed at how much vacation you can pack in when you don't have to pause for naps or potty breaks or hiking at 1 mile per hour because the kids don't want to get in the backpacks.  Thanks again, Mom for watching the kids!

50 Cents a Cap

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina is one of my kids' favorite books.  Somehow, we don't own it, so we've gotten it from the library a bunch of times and I've read it out loud so often, I have the whole thing memorized.

So, you can imagine the delight of my children when my friend Candie sent us 20 (roughly) little boy-sized hats with matching outfits.  I'm not sure what kind of storage system she has at her house that allows her to have all those hats and the outfits readily accessible, but we're going to take a lesson from the peddler and store them like this:

He'll just have to keep himself very straight, so as not to upset his caps.

Update Time

 I'm working my way back with the pictures.  I'm not sure why we took these ones, but they are pretty cute, so I'll put them in with a general update.

Amanda:  I'm working full time, which means three 12-hour shifts per week.  I leave the house no later than 6:18 and I come home sometime around 8:15-8:30.  At first, I had a really hard time making my brain work for such a long stretch.  Once, as I was reporting off to the oncoming nurse, I was telling her about the last pain medication I gave.  "I gave it at 18:30 and it's every 4 hours so he can have it again at....   ....   .... uh... can you do the math for me on that one?"

Its getting better and my mind isn't so sloshy by the end of the day, but that doesn't mean that I know what I'm doing or am confident at my job at all.  I'm still afraid of my boss; I'm afraid that she's going to find out that I'm totally just winging it and probably screwing it all up.

The floor I work on is a surgical specialty floor- women's health (which is a lot of gynecologic oncology (cervical cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, endometrial cancer, etc.), urology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transurethral_resection_of_the_prostate">TURPs, bladder cancer, kidney cancer, urosepsis, etc.), and ear-nose-and-throat (throat cancer, tongue cancer, esophageal cancer). "Wow," you're saying, "that's a lot of cancer patients."  I know, right?  Who knew that's what "surgical specialty" actually meant.

We do get a lot of "medicine overflow" which means the whatever patients who come in through the ED.  I've had several http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIWA">CIWA patients, a guy who had a chronic wound in his scrotum that I swear you could have put a golf ball up inside of it, there was a lady who didn't know there was a sawed-off shotgun in the back seat of her car and it went off and shot her in the buttocks, and the lady who was pregnant and diabetic and decided to fast for Ramadan which put her into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DKA">DKA.

After working there for 5 months, all I can say is that it's my new mission in life never to get cervical cancer and as soon as my girls are old enough, they are totally getting the HPV vaccine.

Tyler:  Tyler still has a job although they've changed his responsibilities around.  Apparently, he gets to use power tools now, or maybe he's just by the power tools, so he's spent the last several days watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-hz1GpFpXA">safety videos.

Ethan: Ethan has been able to walk for several weeks now, but had chosen to continue crawling.  In case you're keeping track, he turned one in July.  Then, on Tuesday, he decided it was the day to make the switch.  He's about 50/50 now which is a big improvement from the 99/1 that he was on Monday.  He only has 4 teeth and is still super crabby.  The doctor asked me at his last check-up how many words he said.  "Uh.... zero?"  He just grunts.  He makes a distinct grunting noise whenever he sees a dog, so I'm going to go ahead and count that.  A mother at the park said that her pediatrician counts signs, in which case we can add bananas and grapes.

Nora: I'm just going to go ahead and say that Nora is the cutest little kid I've ever seen.  She's generally happy and bounces when she walks.  Her little giggle and her chunky baby legs just make me want to eat her.  She sings little songs to herself and like cuddling.  Her current favorite movie is Jumble Book.

Lillian:  Lillian is really learning a lot in kindergarten.  She's one of those kids who will perform for other adults, but will do nothing for me, so it's sort of amazing what her teacher can get her to learn- which is pretty much what I've been trying to teach her for 2 years to no avail.  Her report card showed pretty good marks in everything except "Uses Time Wisely," in which category she got the lowest grade possible.  Yeah, that sounds like her.  She lives life at her own pace and refuses to be rushed.

She is getting to be pretty funny, though.  The other day, I was planting a new flowering vine in our backyard.  It is going to have little purple iris-looking flowers.  "This plant is silly mom.  Why did you want one with purple flowers?" (Also, she questions everything.  "Why did you want this bread?" "Why did you do your hair like that? "Why did you say it was time to go to bed?")

"Because I thought the purple flowers would look pretty."

"Yeah... pretty silly."

The only other question you have is, "what do you do with your kids when you're at work?"  I know this because everyone asks me this question.  A lady I know from church who has kids approximately my kids' ages takes Nora and Ethan all day.  Then a different neighbor picks Lillian up with her school-aged children and hangs on to her until Tyler gets home.  It's kind of a lot of juggling, but we make it work.

Lost and not found

Tyler in the Sahuarita Sun

For one of my classes, I have to make a portfolio of my accomplishments. They want me to include any degrees, certifications, and professional qualifications in addition to any awards, professional thank you notes, scholarships, and grants. I kept all of these things in one box- a purple shirt box. It had my high school diploma; all my scholarship awards and dean's list notifications; my high school swimming, thespian, and physics awards; notes from nursing professors; notable papers I've written that I was especially proud of; etc. I've looked for this box on and off for the last 2 years to no avail. I wasn't ready to accept that it was lost.

On Sunday, I made a systematic effort to find this box and I have to conclude, after 2 hours of looking, that it was lost in the move. I was surprisingly sad about this, given my complete lack of sentimentality. I think it's the whole assignment part of it- I have to prove that I have a life besides my kids, and I can no longer do it. As far as durable accomplishments go, having 3 adorable kids is not bad, but, you know.

Two things that DID turn up in the search: 1. My goggles. 2. The above newspaper clipping of Tyler playing softball. As you can see, the throw was late and he didn't make the play, but that doesn't mean he's not good at softball.

Tyler, He Like Sandwiches

To celebrate Tyler on this Father's Day, I interviewed Nora to find out more about him. I think her answers might have been a little biased by the fact that he had just made her a sandwich.

Untitled from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

How's your backyard?

This represents about 4 weekends of work. By Tyler. He's nice to have around.

Dent and Ding

I've never been very good at haggling with people over prices. If I think something is priced too high, I usually just don't buy it. My only real experience with haggling came when we were shopping for a house. Obviously we were dealing with a hefty chunk of money and nobody ever pays the full price for a house. After making a few offers, I could feel myself getting more comfortable with my dormant yard sale skills. However, I think yesterday's events will go down in history as one of my best deals ever. I was at The Shop which is a soccer and rugby store in Tucson looking for some soccer socks that didn't require pantyhose-like effort to put on over my shin guards (and no, I've never put on pantyhose before, Amanda simply was offering up her expertise when I was having a hard time putting on my socks). I found the cool ones I was looking for and noticed that they were $18!

Really? For socks? Then I noticed one of the pairs looked suspiciously like they had been used and returned and hastily put back on the rack (they were a little dirty and the package was taped back together). Knowing that these socks would soon be dirtied by me anyway, I didn't really care if they came a little broken in. Instead, I took the opportunity to see if they would take a few bucks off the price. The guys behind the counter were convinced they hadn't been worn before, but that they got dirty like that in the store. Yeah, sure guys. But when they took it out of the package, the manager-like guy said they were filthy, and gave the following discount:



Best discount ever. At least for me. Anyone else have any good stories about getting a good deal?

Fun, More Fun, and Most Fun

As far as activities we have available for the kids, some are more fun then others. Take for example the sandbox:

Max capacity: probably like 10 kids
Possible injuries: Sand in the face, maybe a sliver
Fun Rating: 6.0

Then we have the bakers rack:

Max Capacity: 1.5 children
Possible Injuries: Kicks to the face, smashed fingers, bonked heads
Fun Rating: 7.2

Finally we have the wagon:

Wagon Ride from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

Max Capacity: 3 (although we almost had 4)
Possible injuries: minor smushing, faceplant on the driveway, flattened by passing car
Fun Rating: 9.8


Note: No child was injured in the making of this post.

P is for Projects

We're big into letters around here, but that's not what this post is about. On rare occasions, I (Tyler) have time to be handy and make stuff. Here's a couple of the recent ones that I wanted to show off:


First we have the train set. Lillian came home from preschool one time with a train set she made out of toilet paper rolls (the cardboard on the inside) and milk carton lids for wheels, all held together with brads, string, and a little glue. Sadly, the train didn't last through the night. After many tears, I told Lillian I'd make her a new train, a BETTER train.







Second, we have the shelves. You many not know this about our brand new house, but we only have one (1) closet that is not in one of the bedrooms: the Harry Potter closet under the stairs. And although large, it was deep and impossible to get to anything in the back. In with the shelves and now we have an extended pantry/food storage/place for the games/camping stuff and we still have room to walk in and out.







Finally we have the spice rack. Amanda apparently had no problem finding spices when she had them scattered willy nilly about the cupboard. It drove me crazy trying to find anything so I built this double decker rack. It may not be perfectly flat, but I think if you check out the video you'll see that it gets the job done quite nicely.

spice rack from Amanda Ball on Vimeo.

I am not dead

My mother-in-law emailed me yesterday to find out if I had fallen off the face of the Earth. Also, I skyped Allison yesterday, and she was surprised at what Ethan looked like. I guess I haven't taken any pictures of him.


So, no. I'm still here. Turns out, having 3 kids under 5 and going to school full-time is a lot of work.


Here's a quick rundown:

Tyler plays softball in a city league and is having fun playing with all his new woodworking toys.

Lillian is an excellent big sister and is constantly begging me to let her help. She's learning to write and is really solid on L, H, and A.

Nora is 80% potty trained. She can stay completely dry with a bare bottom, mostly dry with panties and not at all dry while she's sleeping or if someone is not right there to take her. That's right, SHE can tell ME when she needs to go. I like that Lillian sometimes says, "when I was a baby, I had to learn how to use the potty." In my head I answer, "honey, I tried when you were a baby, but you didn't want to do it until 6 months ago."

Ethan is still a crabby baby. He sleeps ok at night, but horribly during the day, which is draining for everyone. He's good sized- the 3-6 months clothes are getting a little snug (he's 2.5 months old), but then again, we only know how to make really fat babies. Aaaaand... he's crying.

Garage Update

My parents came to town for a little over a week in August to help out with the new baby. Well, actually my mom came with my niece Courtney to help with the baby, while my dad came to play with me. So I took the week off work and most of the time was spend working on this:

It may not look like it to those with untrained eyes, but this took most of the week (in the garage in AZ in Aug mind you). I'd estimate we made at least 10 trips to home depot and drank at least 20 gallons of water each.

Last weekend I was trying to do something in the garage and I decided it was a little cluttered so I utilized some empty space in the garage like so:

So maybe I put a few extra things on those hooks, but it sure did open up the garage. It even had Amanda saying, "Awww, its like we have a grown-up person garage!". Finally, I have a proper place to shed my blood, sweat and tears. Thanks dad.

Look down, now look up. Your kids are now in a sandbox.

One of my projects I had while away from work when Ethan was born was to build a sandbox. Lillian and I bought all of the materials and sand and cut and assembled it in most of one day. Lillian spent most of her time playing with my hand tools, but she did hand me a screwdriver every now and then. It just so happened that I found a smokin' deal on a plunge router a day or two before I built the box, so I decided to make good use of it and put the kids names on the side: "See Amanda, we did need a router." Hopefully I don't have to have another child before I have time to build something again.

Depressing Marco Polo

My family was having a family reunion last week. We had already decided not to go because I'm hugely pregnant, and contracting, and hoping that I go into labor any second. Then things happened at Tyler's work. They asked us to be discrete, so I can't go into any details, but they asked him to take some furlough time and rather than sit around the house for almost a week, we decided to go catch the tail end of the reunion.

My family was, as always, super fun to hang around. I took only one picture the whole trip: when we crossed the Colorado river into California, Lillian wanted me to take her picture in California because you never know, you might look different. My sister-in-law took a whole bunch, so I'll probably steal some from her. Actually, she was quite dedicated. She followed Nora around for a good 20 minutes in order to get a picture of her smiling. Mission accomplished.

We lounged around the pool at two separate pool parties. Lillian had fun forcing her cousin Soren to play Snow White and dance with her. There was brownies and food and catching up and texas sheet cake and all manner of salads and nothing even close to triple digit temperatures.

There were fireworks, which Lillian almost missed. After we had waited in line for a good 3o minutes to use the questionable port-a-potty and walked all the way back to our blanket, she told me she had to go again. Kyle suggested we walk over to the Von's and use their bathroom because there was no line. It was Tyler's turn, so he took off 15 minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start. Ten minutes went by, they still weren't back. The fireworks started, they still weren't back. Ten more minutes went by, and they walked up; Lillian had picked that exact moment to have some bowel difficulties. I was preemptively stressed out about how much crying and whining was going to happen from Lillian upon learning that she missed the fireworks, but the show was about 30 minutes long, so she didn't realize that she missed anything. Whew.

Also, Grandma Marti put Lillian's hair in braids like Jesse on Toy Story, and then this morning, Lillian wanted ME to do it. Turns out, I'm still really, really awful at french braiding hair. There was a lot of "OUCH! YOU'RE HURTING ME," and "I DON'T WANT YOU TO DO IT ANYMORE." Maybe I can get one of those beauty school heads to practice on.

One word about Tyler's job. Yes, he might lose it. About 10 people in his office of 50 have gone so far, and it's not over. We won't know for sure for a while. He said it's like some depressing game of marco polo where he's sitting at his desk with his eyes closed calling out "marco," except if you catch the people calling out "polo," you get fired.

If it does happen, we'll figure it out.

Long suffering and long toiling

Tyler is a hard worker. Having watched him go through 4 years of school, I knew this, but I haven't really seen him work so hard on one project since then, so I think I forgot a little. On Saturday, he was out in our backyard working for probably about 10 hours. I'd bet he's put in about 30 hours total: digging, shoveling, hauling, raking, more shoveling, leveling, measuring, measuring again, staking, mortaring, and the like.

I probably complained somewhere along the way that he was spending a lot of time in the backyard and not enough time waiting on me hand and foot, but it's going to be soooooo nice to have a place where the kids can go outside and spend some energy without getting incredibly dirty and/or attacked by ants.


Don't mind Lillian's crazy hair. I put it in Chun-Li buns for church which she promptly took out when we got home. Also, she dressed herself.


I think he's going to mortar in the backside just for aesthetics, finish laying the bricks (which is the easy part), and then sweep sand over all the cracks. (And then we have to actually buy patio furniture... but first things first.)


Lillian was fascinated and a little upset that a pigeon walked over daddy's sand, especially after I'd been telling her for a week not to do it. The little footprints are Nora's. In Lillian's words, she's a stinker who doesn't listen.

Tyler thought this picture looked like those vinyl decals people put on the back of their cars. Check out that belly... yeah, I still have 2.5 more months.

To finish the backyard, Tyler has to dig for and install a sprinkler system, I think he's decided to lay sod instead of seed, and do something about maybe making me a planter to have my garden that I will probably kill.

Changing Children

When Lillian was born, people said she was the spitting image of Tyler. Then, she got older and people said she looked just like Tyler.

When we had Nora, I thought she looked a lot like me. Phew, because truth be told, I didn't really like ALL the people who told me How Much she looked like Tyler.

We went to church today with Tyler's parents, and everyone (why do people like to comment on this so much? I don't think it ever occurs to me to say to complete strangers what parent their children look like) said the exact opposite: that Lillian looked like me, and Nora looks exactly like Tyler. I was skeptical (and a little sad) about this until I was looking at pictures of Tyler as a baby and they look almost exactly the same. I looked and looked for a picture of Nora making this face so we could do a side-by-side comparison, and I found one, but Nora has different eyes (probably mine) in the picture, they didn't really look that much alike, thus negating my assertions.

Unstable

Tonight, I offer two stories that represent why I think Tyler is so great.

1. We have four pillows on our bed: two regular and two king sized. The two regular sized pillows have white cases and the king-sized ones match the duvet cover. Now, I think any regular person would realize that the white ones should go underneath the patterned ones when you make the bed. Not Tyler. He regularly puts the larger pillows underneath the white ones when he makes the bed. I asked him once why he did this, and he said that if he puts the smaller pillows underneath they'll be foundationally unstable. I find this hilarious.


2. We've been listening to (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To by Weezer a lot. The chorus of this song has an echo:

If you're wondering if I want you to (I want you to)
I want you to (I want you to)...

Sorry about the, ah, innuendo.
Tyler doesn't sing, usually. Ever. I was singing this song in the shower the other day and I was fully prepared to echo myself, but I heard Tyler's "I want you to" before I had the chance. He sang the rest of the chorus with me.


Sorry if those stories were lame, but I just saw the pillows on the bed, and it made me laugh. So I thought I'd share.

Oh, and thanks to those who de-lurked yesterday, but I know for a fact that not all of you did it. Google Analytics doesn't lie, person from North Hollywood or person from Montrouge, France- I'm looking in your direction.

Tuesday Thinkback - In which my english class resembled an episode of Jerry Springer

Due to Amanda being incapacitated, you will have to suffer through one of my posts.

I have often told Amanda that my high school was ghetto. We have driven past it several times as we have been to visit my parents, but I don't think she has ever really experienced it. Here are a couple of examples of things that were different between our high schools that I have discovered:

1. Amanda's school had a gym and an auditorium that were not the same room (I believe several dances were held in our gym, although not being much of a dancer, I did not attend)
2. Amanda's school had something called "Show Choir" of which Amanda was a member. Apparently it is part choir and High School Musical. Amanda told me once that there were competitions to see who could have the biggest hair. Big hair at my school was usually accompanied by a pick)
   
3. White people were not a minority at Amanda's school. I think she said there were one or two black people in her school.
4. I've never asked, but I think it's safe to assume the pool at Amanda's school did not include a shallow end. (this made for interesting water polo games at MA)
   

Now I did not grow up in a ghetto, but my high school did fall in the middle of several colorful cities. My high school was a cultural experience to say the least. I once had to deliver a pizza (I delivered pizzas for Rount Table in high school) to my school and found a whole wing of classrooms that I had never noticed before and I'm pretty sure it's because nobody there spoke English.

With this background, we now arrive at my senior year English class taught by Mr. Cane. Having previously failed my junior year AP literature test (which I attribute to my confusing Captain Ahab and Captain Nemo in one of my essays), I decided not to attempt another AP English class my senior year. I found Mr. Cane's class to be much more my speed. We were given such assignments as looking words up in the dictionary and reading 3 books throughout the course of the year. Some times we had "debates" in class led by the students. I got through the class by playing tetris on my calculator after finishing my calc homework, or hanging out with Nick (or Duke Nicolas as I see he is known now).

On some of the more exciting days in class, a couple of our classmates decided to have one of their usual shouting matches in class. Mr. Cane was a litte on the pasive agreessive side, so he let them yell at eachother for 5-10 minutes before asking one of them to leave (usually the girl). About half way through the year when the class started to thin out due to dropouts and/or birthing children, the same two people had a slightly more heated argument than usual. I have no idea why they started yelling. It may have had something to do with the guy calling the girl a beast or possibly something worse, but it ended with her leaving the room. However, on her way out the door, she was inspired to pull the fire extinguisher off the wall and hurl it in the direction of her assailant. He was fast enough to dodge it, but it did bounce off his desk and glanced off another student. I'm pretty sure she never came back to class after that.

Tuesday Reminiscences: In which I remember when I thought Tyler had died

*Sigh* We used to live here. This is a place called Montana de Oro (there's supposed to be a tilde over the second 'n' but I'm on Tyler's computer and I can't figure out how to make one) and it's my favorite place on earth.

That's the ocean.

Look at us: so young, so... unencumbered by children. It was a lazy Saturday just a few weeks after we were married, and we decided to hike Oats Peak. Just like that.

When we got to the top of Oats Peak, it was really, really foggy. We thought it would be funny to take a picture of Tyler falling into the mist.

One second after I took this picture, Tyler fell off the side of the mountain, which was not a small distance. My heart stopped. I screamed. I ran over to where he disappeared to find that he did not, in fact fall off the side of the mountain. There's a gentle slope behind him which he stepped down and into the fog to make it seem like he fell off. Jerkface. I really did think he fell and died and that I was a widow at 21.

I don't think I've quite forgiven him (five years after the fact) because one of us brought it up a few days ago, and I was mad all over again.