Our big, fat, carnival goldfish

I've had a few inquiries in recent weeks about whether or not the kiddo's pet fish, Swimmy, is still with us. Swimmy, incidentally, is the goldfish that the kiddo quite improbably won by chucking a ping pong ball into a teensy fishbowl at a midway booth at one of the many summer festivals in our area last July. You know the booth I mean, dontcha? The one where you get 5 ping pong balls for a buck and the odds are stacked against you, because after all it is a carnival midway game booth? The only reason we even let her try was because we were soooo certain there was no way we were leaving the festival with a fish. Whoops.

Anyhow, that $2 goldfish (Hubby paid for 10 ping pong balls) has now cost us probably somewhere in the $100 range, between the original bowl, gravel and food we bought on the way home from the festival, to the 10 gallon aquarium, additional gravel and filters we bought a few days later, to the various other fishy accoutrements and "treats" acquired over the past 10 months. (Yes, there are such things as "treats" for a pet goldfish, didn't you know that? The kiddo would be happy to point them out to you in the fish aisle of your nearest big box store...) The biggest recurring cost is the filters for Swimmy's tank, though the hubby was mentioning to me the other week that he'd read somewhere online an article detailing how one can make one's own fish tank filters. It sounded vaguely MacGuyver-y to me, and for now we're still sticking with the box of 3 filters for $5. So, after all that expense and effort, I'm pleased to say that Swimmy hasn't just survived since that day at the festival last July, this fish has thrived!

For photographic proof, when Swimmy first arrived, she (the kiddo says she is a girl) looked like this:

As of this week, Swimmy now looks like this:

(Yes, we were alarmed when the black edging on Swimmy's fins and tail first started fading. What can I tell you? We're not goldfish experts - thank goodness for Google!)

As you can see, besides turning all orange, Swimmy has grown rather large and robust. Swimmy's weekly diet of goldfish flakes, blood worms and algae cakes have served her well. She now can make a definitive THUNKing noise when she swims up to the top of her tank and then flips and heads back down. It's startling to hear this noise from another room, because my biggest fear is that it wasn't the fish causing it, but rather this:

We don't think that Swimmy thinks of the cat as a threat, per se... Swimmy seems to treat anything moving outside her tank as a potential source of feeding and responds as such - swimming frantically back and forth across the top of the tank, making surprisingly audible "pah-pah-pah" sounds as she smacks her little, fishy lips in anticipation. The cat, however, likes to whap at the glass of the tank with her paws whenever Swimmy gets close, and that doesn't seem like a very good idea...

The kiddo actually is fairly good at her pet-tending responsibilities. She feeds Swimmy her daily flakes and she helps with the weekly 20% water change. The kiddo is also responsible for all of Swimmy's tank decoration (interior and exterior) and rotates various "friends" from her toy collection to keep Swimmy company by sitting next to the tank.

So, yes, we still have our carny goldfish, and whew, what a big fish she has become!

Garden 2008 plans...

The kiddo and I (presently stuck indoors with her stomach bug) have been discussing what we want to plant in our food garden this year. So far, this is the list:

• tomatoes (cherry and full-size)
• peas (usually we do sugar snap peas)
• green beans (we had much better success with pole beans than bush beans last year, so will probably do them again)
• basil
• parsley
• cucumbers
• potatoes
• watermelon
• pumpkins
• sweet corn
• spinach

Now, the last 5 are the kiddo's requests. I have a sneaking suspicion we'll wind up with very sad looking potatoes if we try them, given how craptastically the carrots turned out last year. As far as the spinach goes, I'm happy to try planting some this year, as it is presently her favorite veggie (raw, with ranch dressing for dipping), and it seems silly (and expensive) to keep buying if I can grow it myself. I had decent results the year I planted romaine lettuce, so I'm hoping that spinach will be similar. Hmm, I might even plant a few heads of romaine again this year, too...

We tried corn one other time, and it failed miserably. I'm going to have to do some research and see if there's anything I can do to grow corn that is higher than a bunny rabbit's eye. Pumpkins and watermelons similarly have not been good crops for our little garden plot, but I'm hoping to use a method I inadvertently developed last year with the cukes and see if that helps. You see, last year my cucumbers went crazy and were taking over not only their section of the garden, but the lawn surrounding it as well. Out of desperation, I stuck some tomato cages around them and wound the vines up and around the cages. Whaddya know - best cuke crop I've ever had! I've read about growing vined fruits and veggies on a trellis (with appropriate supports for the fruit as it grows) and I think I may try that for the melon and pumpkins. Maybe we'll get a few melons and a pumpkin or two out of it - something larger than a golf ball, even! I'll also need to step up my vole and Bunny Foo-foo garden defenses, as last year Bunny Foo-foo ate my tomato seedlings down to the ground overnight and the voles took out most of my melon blooms before they'd had a chance to fruitify. The netting I used to protect the berry patch from the birds worked well - I might try to do something like that over the food garden too, or at least some sort of edging/fencing to keep the critters out.

We haven't started any seeds yet, actually we haven't even bought any seeds yet. I'm thinking in another week or two, we might be ready for our first trip to the garden supply store of the year, so long as the weather stays warmish and sunny... Woo-hoo!

Warning: this post is not for the squeamish!

In the wee, small hours of this morning, the kiddo came in to our bedroom to announce that she had just thrown up. She was carrying the "barf bucket" that we'd set next to her pillow last night at bedtime, and sure enough, the paper towels lining the blue, Tupperware bowl were no longer pristine.

Naturally, no parent ever particularly wants to hear the words "I'm going to throw up!" or "I just threw up!" spoken by their child, especially when those words rouse them from a nice, quiet sleep. This invariably leads to a scene similar to the one that has now occurred twice in our household in recent hours: one parent grimly stripping down bed linens, checking stuffed animals for spatter, marching down to the washer with the assorted contaminated items and then scrubbing up the spots on the carpet while the other (looking equally grim) waits for the barfing to subside, provides the necessary comforting and calming (which may involve getting spattered or doused oneself) then strips and cleans up the kiddo, usually involving a shower, thorough tooth-brushing and complete change o' jammies.

There is some good news to the barfing announcement in our family, however. You see, there was a time not too long ago when our kiddo couldn't tell that she was throwing up, either before, during or after the act. The first time she ever threw up (like from a stomach bug, I mean, not just like spitting up as an infant), she was about 16 months old, and she had been sitting on the floor playing with some toys while I sat on the couch a short distance away. She got up, came over to me, and said in this confused and questioning-y sort of way "Mommmmmmmy?" and then proceeded to vomit all over my lap, the couch and herself. She then turned back around, completely calm, and returned to the spot on the floor where she'd been playing, while I sat stunned and dripping. As I was trying to figure out the best way to get to the necessary cleaning supplies - this was going to require a LOT of paper towels at the least - she turned her head to the side and vomited again. (Isn't it weird how a kid can barely have anything in their system, yet somehow manage to yack up gallons upon gallons of stuff that doesn't even resemble anything they had eaten in recent memory?) Once again, she was utterly calm and not in the least concerned about the volcanic eruptions pouring forth from her mouth. She barfed and then went right back to her blocks, wholly unfazed. It was just....weird. No tears, not the least bit upset, certainly not any sort of reaction I'd ever witnessed in a person involuntarily vomiting before.

In the years that followed that first vomiting episode, the kiddo had a few other stomach bugs. As with that first time, she never seemed aware of or bothered by them. More than once, we didn't discover she'd thrown up until the next morning, when we'd walk in to find her sleeping soundly in a bed covered in hours-old, drying ick. (I warned ya - this post is not for the squeamish!) It still seemed odd that throwing up would rank so low on the "child upset-o-meter" but it was the way it was.

It wasn't until the kiddo was three and a half that we learned why she was so under-responsive to the whole vomiting thing. It was at this point that we had her evaluated by an occupational therapist and learned that our kiddo has Sensory Integration Dysfunction, nowadays more commonly known as Sensory Processing Disorder. Basically, this means that her brain doesn't process the information it receives through the various senses in quite the right way. In her case, the kiddo is a sensory seeker, who tends to be under-responsive to sensory stimuli. This would include the "oh my goodness I'm about to barf!" sense. Another, less icky example is that for the longest time, the kiddo's brain didn't register the sensation of being dizzy. She could (and would) spin and spin and spin and never feel dizzy, even when her body would physically react the way anyone's would after such spinning around. She'd be weaving like a drunken sailor and still want to spin (or be spun) some more.

When we first learned of this diagnosis, I did a crash course on SPD. I read every book I could get my hands on about the topic. (If you're interested in learning more about it, my favorite book on the subject is Sensational Kids: Hope and Help for Children with Sensory Processing Disorder by Lucy Jane Miller, PhD. Well written and not too dry, it is comprehensive and easy to read without getting caught up in technical terminology or highly academic language that would go over the average reader's head.) Not every person with SPD has the same issues. Some people go the other way of our kiddo - they are hyper-responsive instead of under-responsive, whether it be to the way clothing feels on their body to noises or lights or commotion. In our world, though, we've got a classic example of a sensory seeker. The kiddo needs more (in some cases, waaaay more) sensory input than the average person to be able to register the different sensations properly. This, as you can imagine, led to some difficulties for her, especially once she was out in the world outside our home (like, say, preschool or church or a shopping mall).

The good news is that occupational therapy is doing wonderful things for the kiddo. In just over a year of OT, she has made some huge improvements. They say that there is the possibility for the brain to "rewire" itself to a certain degree when kids with SPD receive the appropriate OT type help, and we can see that this is true. One example is that now when the kiddo spins and spins, eventually she feels dizzy. Yes, it still takes her brain a lot longer than the average person to recognize the sensation, but two years ago that sensation wasn't there at all. Also, the barfing - she now feels that horrible "I'm gonna barf" feeling, often times with enough advance notice to make it to the bathroom or the barf bucket, and to alert us to the coming ick.

They say that one in every twenty children has some form of SPD. They are finding that many children on the autism spectrum have SPD (though not all children with SPD are on the autism spectrum). Even with this prevalence of SPD, it is still a largely unknown, under-researched and understudied disorder, though there are a few places out there trying to change that. There are people out there too, though, some of them "experts" even, who don't believe that SPD is real, or who think that it is a lot of hype - that the folks who are talking about it are making it up, or blowing "bad behavior" out of proportion, and others who think this is just the "new ADD" or something, like a fad or the latest train to jump on - the latest excuse parents use for the less-than-perfect-appearing behavior of their coddled child(ren). (The kiddo even was evaluated by an occupational therapist who didn't "believe" in SPD and gave us a line of hooey about what the kiddo's supposed issues were. While we knew enough at the time to know that she was full of crap, we still wound up losing several months of OT time because of her, and yes, I'm still angry about that more than two years later.)

To those people, those detractors or disbelievers who think that SPD is a load of bull, well, I say take a look at my child. Look at how she was two years ago, and look at her now. There is no denying the signs, the behaviors and the improvements since she began OT. Otherwise, we never would've gotten that early morning wake-up call about the barfing today. I hope that someday in the not-too-distant future, people know and understand SPD the way they do ADD or dyslexia or any other number of issues that impact children in their formative years, but for now I'm just glad that we know about it and that the kiddo is getting the appropriate services to help her with it and hopefully remove some of the challenges that she might face as she enters elementary school in the fall.

(Oh and PS - the barfing? Not the way I'd have chosen to start off the kiddo's Spring Break from school. Not at all!)

The sound of silence

I am not going to moan about my sinuses and germies any longer, because I'm feeling mostly better and because I don't want to dwell on it - the pity party is over and I'm sweeping up the leftover confetti and loading the dishwasher now. I say mostly better because I appear to be losing my voice as the rest of everything improves. At the moment, I'm in between "phone sex operator" and "Barry White" which means that by day's end, I will likely be somewhere between "Darth Vader" and "no voice at all" if history is any guide. I'm trying to combat this in two ways. The first way is by not talking as much as possible. (Everyone who knows me, join in: HA HA HA HA HARDY HAR HA HA HEE HEE HOO HOO HAAAAA!!!) I know, I know, it is a Herculean task for Heather to not talk. BUT, it hurts like heck when I do, so I am trying to rest my voice until it heals. I haven't spoken since 9:08 this morning when I left preschool, and I don't intend to speak again until I'm back picking her up at 11:30. See? That will be over two whole hours without me uttering a peep! (Not a record, but surely close...) I've even written out my order for the butcher shop so I don't have to talk (um, as much) when we go in there.

The second thing I'm doing is drinking lots of tea, with honey and lemon. Salada white tea, to be exact. No, I'm not just saying that because my dad is their VP of Marketing, either - it's seriously good stuff!

*brief pause*..... and I've just gotten off the phone with my sister. Yep, that means I didn't make it the full two hours without speaking, but she had to take my year-old niece to the ER last night for jumping out of her crib (one big lump on the noggin, no concussion, she's fine) so I kinda had to take that call. Well, I went over one hour without talking and am now back to my vow o' silence, at least 'til I arrive back at preschool in a bit.

One other thing. My dear friend Coco recently honored me with this lovely "blog bling" -

It was a very sweet thing for her to do, and I am humbled by Coco's gracious and kind comments about me. All I can say is, it is a mutual admiration society because Coco is one of my favorite people, ever, too. So, thanks and *mwah* Coco! I look forward to our eventual trip to Vegas mostly because it will mean getting to hang out with you, and not even so much because it would mean I'd be on a kid-free vacay for the first time ever since she was born (which was the last time I was in Vegas, too)! Not that any trip is imminent or even in the vaguest of planning, but someday.......

Why I will never, ever use a neti pot, except on one (highly improbable) condition

I know, I know, neti pots are fantabulous and using one would cure me of all my ills. Here's the thing about why I will never, ever willingly use a neti pot. I haaaaaaate getting water in my nose. Actually, in my nose, eyes or ears. Now, regarding the ears, I have good reason - I'm super-prone to getting ear infections and even getting a drop or two of water in them in the shower can bring on a doozy. As a kid, I had loads of ear infections, including a double-eardrum-rupture sitch on an airplane en route to Florida. Ow. So, my over-caution with water in the ears, not an unfounded concern. The eyes and the nose, I have no valid reasons, it's just a thing of mine. You know, a thing... we all have 'em, right? When I had to swim underwater as a child, like for swimming lessons, I would suit up from goggles through nose clips and ear plugs. Seriously. Nowadays, I have no reason to go underwater. If I'm in a pool (and I am quite a bit these days as the kiddo appears to be part fish), I do that genteel, leave-my-glasses-on, half-assed backstroke or pseudo-doggy-paddle/frontstroke that keeps my ears and face nice and dry. If heat-induced insanity or other madness takes momentary hold and I do decide to dunk underneath the surface, I will close my eyes and hold my nose and ears closed for the entire time I'm submerged. Yes, it is a tremendously funny sight, I know. But, it is a thing of mine, and thus, I will never willingly insert anything up my nose that will flood it with water or any other liquid. Unless George Clooney asked me personally to do so, and I seriously doubt that George is overly concerned with or even aware of the state of my sinuses. I won't even do it at my doctor's suggestion/advice/order - when we lived in NH, I had a crotchety, old country sort of doctah who advised me to fill a serving spoon with warm water and salt and snort that concoction every two hours 'til my sinus infection cleared. Never did it once, though I have become accustomed to using the saline nasal misty spray stuff. So, there you go. I have many things and this is one of them. Maybe I'll post about one of my things each week... that'll be sure to entertain and amuse the masses! Hee!

At least the nasal steroid spray (which smells weirdly of roses and geraniums - kinda like an old lady-esque perfume) is not that bad to administer and working very well. By this afternoon, fully dosed up on the nasal stuff, Muccinex, Tylenol and Advil, I felt up to the task of bringing the kiddo to a classmate's birthday party. I lasted as long as the kiddo did, but an hour and a half inside one of those "greenhouse-style-glass-from-floor-to-ceiling" McDonald's Playplaces with 18 screaming, crazy 4 and 5 year olds? Not what the doctor, George Clooney, or anyone else ordered. Whew. I'm so beat now that I'm planning to be in bed by 8pm. Maybe 7...

Oh - one last thing, have to give a quick shout-out to my hubby for subbing for me as worship leader in church this morning, which was a Communion Sunday on top of everything else. Thanks, dude!

Germtastic update... pity party commencing now

Just got back from the doctor. Well, the pharmacy after the doctor. Turns out I have a sinus infection and also, possibly, the flu. That's the bad news. The worse news? The doc thinks that what I have is viral, not bacterial, in origin, so no antibiotics for me. I did get a prescription for a nasal/sinus steroid, which should be fun, based on the administering instructions the NP gave me when she brought in the scrip. I'm supposed to use that, Muccinex, alternating ibuprofen and Tylenol, nasal saline spray (no neti pots in this face, thankyouverymuch), liquids and rest. Pity party commencing now - it is a gorgeous day out and supposed to be even nicer tomorrow. Waaaaah!!

Germtastic

Bleargh. The kiddo and I both brewed up a nice, steaming batch of germs overnight, and have full-blown colds this morning. I swallowed some ibuprofen around 4am and am still running a fever even with the drugs in my system, and the kiddo's got herself a low grade fever and stuffed up head. The ibuprofen is also not doing much to get rid of my pounding headache or to relieve the "on fire" feeling going on in my throat. *whine, moan, whine* So, no school or after-school playdate for her today, and not much of anything for me, either, beyond huddling up underneath several blankets and moaning. Since we're both stuffed up, I'm going to start up what I like to call the Mentholated Rainforest, wherein I get the humidifier cranked up to 11 and Vicks-ified, along with running hot, steamy showers and hanging out in the bathroom. Yep, it's definitely a Mentholated Rainforest-and-several-cups-of-tea kind of day. The kiddo doesn't mind such days because the TV time rules go out when the window when she's sick, and she gets to watch a lot more than normal, which also aids Mommy in being able to sleep - thank heavens for the commercial-free, children's programming channels! I *heart* our digital cable on days like these! At least it is rainy and dreary out so we won't feel like we're missing much by staying indoors in our jammies...

This-n-That

You know how "they" say that you should take at least 10,000 steps a day? I've read that many times, along with helpful hints on how to get more exercise into one's day - you know, park in the farthest spot from the entrance instead of driving around looking for the closest spot, taking the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator, etc. Well, I found out that I do not take nearly as many steps as I thought I do by actually wearing a pedometer for the bulk of one day earlier this week. I put it on when I got dressed around 8am and wore it until 4pm, at which point it registered that I'd taken 2,703 steps. Now, this was not a fancy-shmancy pedometer - it was a freebie that Hubby had been given while touring an assisted living facility (um, not for us or any of our relatives, btw; it was a work-related thing). So, Hubby warned me the guy that gave it to him said that it has a 10% error rate, so while the good news (ha, ha) is that I could've taken closer to 3,000 steps, the bad news is it might only have been around 2500. In reality, 10% either way wouldn't get me so much closer to the 10,000 step goal, so that's a non-factor, I suppose, and while I did more walking (up and down stairs after the kiddo, etc) between 4pm and bedtime, it isn't like I took another 7,000 steps. So, I'm woefully under-moving, is the conclusion I've drawn. Depressing to admit, but also nice to have a realistic picture since I honestly had no idea how many steps I typically take in a day. I wore the pedometer on a pretty average day in terms of movement for me - I didn't go to the gym or run a marathon (ha!) or anything, but I didn't sit on the couch reading or in front of my computer for hours on end, either. I guess I'd figured that my routine day (hey, I'm always running upstairs or downstairs for this or that when I'm home, and there's that flight of stairs at the kiddo's preschool, and we're usually out and about doing things during the afternoons....) included more steps. One more reason to renew my commitment to get to the gym at least 3 times a week - to get those extra 7,000 steps in and get me up to that 10,000 mark!

***
Things that have physcially delayed us while driving the kiddo to preschool in the past 15 days:
- getting stuck behind a snowplow
- getting stuck behind a funeral procession (twice)
- getting stuck by the drawbridge being opened (yeah, kind of an unusual one, but our drive takes us over a drawbridge, so while it is rather cool to see the road just suddenly going straight up in the air as the boats go through and out onto Lake Ontario, it's also a real, literal roadblock and there's no alternate route - we just have to sit there as the road becomes a parking lot for about 10 minutes while the bridge does its thing)
- getting stuck behind a school bus that was picking up kids for about 2 miles before it turned, thankfully, onto a side street (I don't know if the bus was really early or running late, but we usually don't get stopped by buses so I'm guessing this was just a freak thing and hopefully a one-time occurrence!)
- getting stuck on our street by a flock - whoops, I guess technically it'd be a gaggle, now wouldn't it? - of Canada geese who were moseying on across the street en route to the pond behind our property. When I say "moseying" I mean it, too - they were going soooo slowly and I swear honking the horn just slowed them down more!

Things that have made the drive seem much longer while driving the kiddo to preschool in the past 15 days:
- the kiddo repeatedly whistling her version of Flight of the Bumblebee, utilizing her recently acquired mastery of the skill of whistling as well as her entire whistling range which is about 5 notes (Thanks, Little Einsteins, for teaching the kiddo the tune in the first place...)
- the kiddo deciding to count every garage we passed on the way to school, getting up to 119 (not sure if she was counting multi-car garages separately or just one garage per house) and then deciding she "just felt like counting," which she then proceeded to do starting from 1 again
- the kiddo repeatedly singing a snippet of a song they're learning in music class despite repeated pleas to STOP FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY, JUST STOP PLEEEEEASE! from her quickly-losing-her-not-very-tight-grip-to-begin-with-on-sanity mommy (the section she keeps singing goes "listen to the water, listen to the water, rolling down the river" and is not recognizable to me either by tune or lyrics.... anyone recognize the words that can maybe help me out? Otherwise, I'm going to have to hunt down the music teacher at preschool, ask her to sing me the song, then bribe her with whatever means necessary to never, ever sing that song again with the kids)
- the kiddo telling the "Knock Knock" classic:
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Banana!
Mommy: Banana who?
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Banana!
Mommy: Banana who?
Kiddo: Knock knock!
Mommy: Who's there?
Kiddo: Orange!
Mommy: Orange who?
Kiddo: Orange you glad I didn't say banana again? *gales of maniacal laughter*
and by "telling" I mean "repeatedly yelling 'KNOCK KNOCK! I SAID KNOCK KNOCK, MOMMY!!! KNOOOOOOOOOCK KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!!!!'" when I stopped responding after about the thirtieth repetition, and then mangling the "orange" punchline and having to say "No, wait, I mean, um...." and starting it over three or four times before getting it mostly right.

***
Another sure sign that spring has sprung? I was brushing our cat this morning and while brushing her, she shed enough fur to make another whole cat, at least. Maybe two, or possibly three smallish kittens... Around our house, Spring = Hairball season!

***
Oh, I wound up not doing anything for April Fools' Day this year. Turned out I couldn't find the supplies I needed in time. Next year, I'll be all over it though, and will get what I need in advance. Stay tuned - we're just 363 days away!! *evil eyebrow wiggle*

***
My new favorite clothing in the world? The "lounge pants" (brand - Gilligan and O'Malley Ultimate) that I found recently at Target. Soooo comfy and cheap, too! I'm practically living in them when I'm at home. I was tempted to not change into real clothes the other day when I had to run to the store, but I refrained and did put actual jeans on for the trip. I love comfy clothes and jammies, and these lounge pants fit excellently into both categories! Heavenly!

***
I may be approaching my late 30s, but I'm still hip enough to have downloaded six songs from this season's American Idol finalists to my iPod. Okay, maybe admitting that I downloaded songs from American Idol isn't hip, but I did, and I enjoyed them thoroughly while running errands when the kiddo was in school this morning! I guess I should score a few "hip" points for having an iPod, at the least. Or is it not even hip to say "hip" anymore? What should I even say? Cool? Happening? With it? Hmmm, this reminds me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes, with which I shall wrap up this post and get downstairs to test the latest batch of monkey bread that the kiddo and I baked earlier this afternoon (love the way the whole house smells like cinnamon now, too!):

I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was, and now what I’m with isn’t it. And what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me. ~ Abraham "Grampa" Simpson

April Fools' Day

My dad is a master jokester. Seriously, I could go on for pages about the various jokes and pranks he pulled. One that comes to mind every April 1st, however, is the one I'm going to relate now. It was the best April Fools' joke I've ever had pulled on me personally, and one of the best I've ever heard of anywhere else.

It was the year that I was 13 years old. Dad hadn't tried anything yet all day, which was unusual because he was typically good for at least a mini-prank before we left for school. By evening, we'd mostly forgotten about April Fools' and were going through the motions of a quite mundane day. Mom and Dad decided that we'd get pizza for dinner, which was a huge treat back then. Any take-out food was rare in our house, and certainly something to be celebrated. Mom called in the order to our local pizzeria (which we supplied with tomatoes for a few summers when Mom and Dad's gardening got way out of hand and we had an entire, large plot dedicated to tomatoes and cucumbers) and after the 20 minutes were up, Dad headed out to get the 'za. As he pulled back up our very long driveway, he was honking the horn of the truck. This wasn't an entirely unusual occurrence, as we had all manner of cats and dogs as well as a goat that used to let herself out of the barn whenever she darn well pleased, and various combinations of these critters would often hang out in the middle of the driveway, blocking traffic from going any further. (I once, in later years, came with an inch of pancaking that dang goat as we played Chicken with her goaty, swaybacked, saggy body and my beloved Oldsmobile Delta 88. I kept creeping forward, inch by inch, as she stood firm, bleating and spitting at my car. Oh, Skeeter...) The honking did serve to draw our attention to the kitchen door, though, so my sisters, mother and I were all gathered in the kitchen as Dad came in bearing three pizza boxes aloft.

Now, the fact that he had THREE pizza boxes should've tipped us off, as we normally only ever ordered one or at the most two pies. Maybe my mom realized something was up, but before any of us had time to process anything, BAMMO! Dad tripped on the doorstep and landed smack dab on his face and on the pizza boxes, now instantly crushed beneath his chest. There was one eternal second of horrified silence, then the wail went up: "OUR PIZZAAAAAAAAA!" Our faces fell as low as Dad, prone on the floor, pizza boxes squished flat as could be. I think my mom may've asked whether he was okay, but for us girls, it was all about the food. That made the moment even sweeter for Dad, as he groaned and slooooowly got up, shaking his head and saying "well, I guess there won't be any pizza for dinner tonight after all." I believe at least one of us kids was in tears at this point, and we were all equally devastated at the thought of no delicious, cheesy pizza - any alternative menu just couldn't be as tasty and might well include *shudder* lamb, as we had a freezer full of previous barn occupants ever at the ready. We begged him to check and see if there was any slice left that could be salvaged, when he sprang it on us - "APRIL FOOLS'!!!!!!" He opened the boxes to show us that they were empty, while the real pizza was waiting out in the truck. He'd convinced Phil, the pizzeria owner, to give him a few empty boxes so he could prank us, and oh yeah, he got us good that year.

The kiddo is a little on the young side for April Fooling, but that isn't going to stop me from trying to come up with something we can do to Daddy when he gets home from work tonight. I have a few ideas, all of which I think would make Grandpa proud. Shhhh, don't tell him we're plotting, and happy April Fools' Day!

Burning question of the day - the way back

You know how, when we were kids, families drove around in station wagons instead of minivans? And how those station wagons had a third row seat that faced backwards, out the back window? What did you call that third row seat? (I guess it even applies to the minivans of today, now that I think about it. Though our third row seat is usually folded down or removed entirely, so as to better utilize the space to cram things like sleds or wagons or bags of mulch into our Sienna.)

In my family (and I think in my neck of the woods in general), we called that last row seat the way back (as in: I want to sit in the middle because I will get really car sick if I have to sit in the way back for the ride to Grandma's), but Hubby insists the proper term is the back back, and the debate has raged on for over 15 years now in our house. I wonder if this is a regional thing, like soda vs pop. (Side note: I refuse to refer to soda as "pop" even though I'm presently living in a part of the country that is weirdly, firmly entrenched in the pop camp. Drive about an hour east of here and it is 100% soda territory.) I wonder if there are other, completely different terms folks use out there in the great, big world. So, I'm putting it out to you, dear readers: What do you call the third row of seats? Way back, back back, or something completely different?