To All My Dear Friends

Who had their lives altered yesterday...you know who you are...we love you and are thinking about you. Please call or write if we can help at all.

Vacation Dispatch

We're coming to you on location from the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and let me tell you, friends, our weather is terrible. It's been cold and windy and drizzly basically since we left Atlanta on Saturday. It rained the whole way to Raleigh, where we met up with Bruce's parents and stayed the night. Then it rained most of the day Sunday on our trek to the islands. The rental house is gorgeous; it's everything we could ask for in a family-friendly home-away-from-home. It even came equipped with Duplo sized Legos (those are bigger Legos, for those of you without toddlers), wooden blocks, and a variety of kids' books- Score! There's a pool that we didn't expect to be able to use, and a hot tub that we did, but it seriously, has been too cold to even think about it. Monday and Tuesday included temps in the low 50s, and that's before the chill from the gale-force winds was included. The windows are all foggy with salt that is tossed into the air from the violence of the waves. The sky and the sea are the same color grey. Basically...yuck.

We took a walk on the beach yesterday for about 15 minutes- poor Caetlin could barely move when she tried to walk into the wind. If we walked down the beach with the wind, though, it worked okay, even though it was cold. She wasn't scared of the water at all, even though it was loud and big and cold. I was really proud of her. She just toddled down the sand, stopping to pick up the requisite stick. She did consent to hold my hand when she got close to the water, though, which was a sign of her slight insecurity. As she got used to it, she stopped wanting to hold my hand. That made me nervous, but the whole hand-holding thing was just a sop to my nerves anyway. I'm still way faster than her, and we were plenty far enough up the beach that the waves were not going to carry her off. I think it's kind of a primitive reaction on my part; I love the violence and wildness of the stormy ocean, but it scares me, too. I remember swimming in the Gulf of Mexico after a storm as a teenager, and diving under and occasionally getting caught up and tossed by waves that large. For a few long moments, I couldn't tell which way was up, which way was air. It was frightening, and that was in the benign Gulf of Mexico, on the Florida coast. It didn't compare to the vast and angry Atlantic outside my window. No wonder I was afraid for my daughter, so impossibly tiny against so much water.

Anyway, we didn't stay out long, because it was just too freaking cold. It was merely an effort at getting out of the house a little bit in any case; we're all going a little stir crazy, Caetlin most of all. She broke my heart yesterday asking to go to the park in her little baby voice. It sucked telling her no. We offered her the sea instead, and she climbed all the way up and then back down the dune that separates the beach from the house. It was pretty impressive, and wore her out sufficiently.

The wind at least mostly died down today, so it felt a little warmer, and we went to the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. This was the site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, which we may go see tomorrow (weather permitting). The island is now home to a couple of villages, and includes the aquarium. It's a small aquarium, but that made it basically Caetlin-sized, and it included lots of space to run around in. It wasn't too crowded, so she didn't bug anyone with her incredible energy. Above all, it was nice to get out of the house, even though it was still cold and drizzly, if less windy today.

Oh! Also, Bruce yesterday and his mom today have had food poisoning/an intestinal bug of some kind, which has just been peachy. Bruce is recovered, though his mom is suffering pretty badly. I have the merest touch of it- enough to put me off my food today and that's about it. I'm grateful I'm not any worse. On the plus side, I never did get Caetlin's cold, so my pessimism paid off!

Anyway, the weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow (please, Mr. Sun!), and be nice Friday. It's supposed to rain again Saturday, and we're coming home on Saturday night. Here's hoping we can fit a bit more vacation into these next couple of days.

Tomorrow: Wright Brothers Museum, possibly the Lost Colony and the Elizabethan Gardens on Roanoke Island, if the weather so allows. I'm also completely turning my Blackberry off tomorrow, in an effort to remain as unplugged from work as possible. I've been managing something that required a small amount of effort, but it was more diligent watching of the email than I would have preferred over these past three days, and it closed today. Nothing will fall apart if I tune out for a day or two, so that is something I will look forward to. I also want to post some pictures and premier a new feature here on I Was Told There Would Be No Math: video!

Do a sun dance, everyone, please. It's a beautiful house, but I'm ready to see something different!

Of Course

Because we were set to go on vacation next week, of course my daughter has come down with the first cold she's had, oh, since our last vacation. It's been a good while since her last one, anyway. She has an immune system like clockwork.

But wait, you say. If she's sick now, it means she probably will be mostly recovered then. Yes, yes she will. Selfish as it may seem, it's not really her health I am concerned about. Let's see...she started being symptomatic yesterday, I can avoid it for three days, add two for incubation... aaannnndd I predict that I'm getting sick right around Thursday of this week. Which will make my vacation just peachy.

Bruce says I shouldn't write about this, "Because it's like The Secret, only like it's a bad Secret. You'll make it come true by thinking about it and writing about it." It's the Power of Negative Thinking all the way around here these days.

My Knees Hurt

I had this whole post written yesterday, about how I had taken a walk to a law firm up the street, and how it had turned into this big ordeal, but what it turns out I really wanted to write about was the fact that I fell down and skinned my knees. It hurt, and continues to hurt today.

Here's the relevant part:

I rolled my ankle in my heels, and I pitched onto the concrete. I ruined my shoes, scraping the leather off the entire toe of one of them, and skinned my knees horribly, though thankfully my pants were not torn. Skinning one's knees is just such a grade school thing to do, and I thought of my daughter and how she cries immediately and forcefully when she skins a knee or her hands or bumps her head. I had new sympathy for her right then- we forget how much skinning one's knee really stings, besides being a really kid-like injury.

My knees hurt and my shoes are in the trash, and that's pretty much all there was noteworthy about that.

Yaaack

I am so sick. I think I did this to myself, by eating that turkey noodle soup from the cafe at work for dinner, when I had intended to have it for lunch, and it had been sitting on my desk all that time. Let this be a lesson unto me: thou shalt not be cavalier about refrigeration.

I will spare you the (exceedingly) messy details. Just...yaaack.