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December 22, 2005
some happiness!!
Inaru Isabel Beatriz Correa is here. [Accent over the U in Inaru, but I don't know how to put one there.]
She is soooo beautiful.
Welcome, little one.
Posted by mryonker at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2005
introducing...
...Deb, my lovely next-door neighbor and running friend. She has done me the great honor of guest-blogging this past weekend's run.
And for the record: we did NOT put our hands in horse poop, and *she* found this crazy run, I just registered us for it.
Holy crap was it hard. But as Heather says: next year, we'll be READY!!
This is us, PRE agony (from l to r):
Deb, me, Heather.
Posted by mryonker at 09:43 AM | Comments (3)
warm horse apples make excellent hand warmers
At last...A chance to redeem myself to readers of Madeline's blog! From
reading past blogs, one might get the impression that I force poor,
resisting M. to accompany me upon grueling, horrific runs. (I believe she
once referred to me as "The Running Nazi," after all.) Finally, the truth
can be told!!
M. and I take turns finding and registering us for area
runs. Last time was my turn and I found us a nice, sedate 10K just twenty
minutes from our town. It sucked, in that we finished in nearly last
place and by the time we returned there was not even one bottle of water
to be had. The conditions were far from adverse, however - it was 50
degrees out, and the Christmas lights along the lake were beautiful. Even
the stench of the most polluted lake in North America was almost
unnoticeable.
This time, however, it was M.'s turn to find and register us for a run.
Talk about grueling and horrific...She found one called "Last Chance" at
Highland Forest, 50 miles away. We set out at 6:45 Saturday morning, stopping
first at our local convenience store for sustenance. We determined right
away that regular Gator Aid was not going to cut it, and we chose, instead
ENDURANCE Gator Aid. That's right - rather than train sufficiently, we
choose, instead, to place our faith in the magic of sugar water. We
picked up Heather along the way, and by 8:30 we were on the trail. We all
looked the part, decked out in fancy schmancy yak trax and running pants. Between the three of us, we had all the essential items - M. had a cell
phone, H. had a GPS, and I had the all-important chap stick. What we did
NOT have, though, was the foggiest notion of just how damn SNOWY a Central
New York forest can be. Or how freaking mountainous. My dear husband has
since informed me that we did NOT run up mountains as "mountain" is a
geographic term reserved for land masses above 1,000 feet. I beg to
differ. Kilimanjaro has nothing on these bad boys. The place was
LITTERED with mountains, each more steep than the next.
And well marked it was not. While I am reluctant to use the word "lost," I will say that we
became more than a bit disoriented, backtracking several times. Our
"short cut" probably added several miles to our overall distance. By sheer
dumb luck we stumbled upon a real paved road, and since this beat trudging
through calf deep snow, we decided to stick with the road.
Oh, and did I mention that we were visually impaired throughout this
entire experiece? My glasses were completely fogged up, and M. removed
hers for the same reason, so it's rather miraculous that we aren't still
stumbling around out there. After we became disoriented (NOT lost, damn
it!!) we didn't see another person, and to distance ourselves from our
physical agony, our mental stress and our fear of the eventual need to dig
a snow latrine, we engaged in deep conversation. This VERY deep
conversation covered diverse topics such as the correct pronunciation of
"gefilte fish," mens' idea of foreplay ("Brace yourself!"), link sausage
as the perfect food, and the inherent evil of our president. Finally,
just when it seemed as though we would have to go the route of the Donner
Party ("Hey, Madeline, Can you just bend over to check my yak track for
me?" Impale M. with Chap Stick wielded as lethal weapon, chew raw M.
flesh and imagine it is succulent sausage...Mmmmm...Sausage), we saw a
Man/Beast up ahead. It turned out to be a woman on a sleigh pulled by two
enormous horses. As we closed the gap, we prayed for hot, steaming horse
apples in which to warm our freezing hands (hence the enigmatic title of
this rambling entry). This was not necessary, though, for the lodge was
just ahead. Inside we were greeted with the smell of pancakes, REAL maple
syrup (NOT the "Aunt Maple's" pseudo-syrup from Aldi's that I typically
force upon my poor family) and SAUSAGE!!!!! Heather took dainty, delicate
bites, Madeline displayed an average and normal appetite and I ate twice
my own not inconsiderable body weight in sausage. (Ten links, but who's
counting?)
Back in the car we changed into dry socks and engaged in a tried and true
female bonding ritual whereby we compared the length and thickness of our
leg hair. (For the record, I had the most hair and the fewest tattoos.)
Altogether, a very satisfying experience. I can't wait 'til next time!
Posted by at 09:31 AM | Comments (2)
December 16, 2005
I'll go if you go
A phone call:
Me: Hello?
Neighbor D: Hiya. It's dark. And cold. And it's supposed to snow.
Me: I'll go if you go.
She: Ok. Give me a half hour.
In a half hour, a strange beast shows up on my backdoorstep. She has a ski mask, covered by two hoods. Her glasses poke forth, but it is the only part of her face showing. She wears an orange reflective vest over her many layers. On her feet she wears orange neon yaktrax.
I'm pulling on my own, which are neon yellow. I don an equally scary-looking ski mask and equally geeky reflective vest and we venture out.
It's 630 pm, and the thermometer reads 22 F. A snow/sleet mix falls, and the wind periodically blows it into our faces, which elicits a chorus of "Ow! OW! OW!" from us, as it feels like we're being stabbed by mini icicles.
We loop the village, dodging the one or two cars that are out on the unplowed roads. We get a couple honks, and we imagine the rude and derisive comments drivers are making about us.
"Wacko runners."
"Damn crazy freak-ass Parish runners."
"Those people have lost their senses, clearly. Do they not see the BLIZZARD??"
etc.
The short three miles fortifies us, though. It proves that the elements are no match for us.
This morning: snow days all around. The snow continues to fall. The plows are unable to keep up so far.
I'm waiting for the phone to ring.
Posted by mryonker at 08:19 AM | Comments (7)
December 14, 2005
joshenese
Little J baby AKA Monster Toddler AKA Destructo Boy, has his own little language. And it consists only of a handful of words, each of which has about six different meanings, depending on context.
We have taken to repeating what he says, translating it into *real* English, after every phrase he utters, in the hopes that he will one day leave aside his made up words for ones that people other than those who share his house will understand.
So, a random conversation with Josh often sounds like:
J: Daddy! Ya-Ya!!
Me: Daddy's watching football!
J: Mama! Meh!
Me: Yes, Mommy's drinking water!
J: Mama! EE-ah meh!
Me: Yes, mommy sees the lake!
J: Mama! Meh!
Me: Mommy, please get me some milk!
J: Daddy! Ya-Ya!
B: Look! I'm jumping on Daddy who is lying unsuspectingly on the floor!
Josh Glossary:
Ya-Ya: broken, hurt, scissors, knife, screwdriver, other sharp pointy potentially-wound-inflicting object, or the hole MADE by such an object. also means football or the act of tackling someone, as in football
Meh: water, milk, soda, lake, river, other body of water, and to drink
Gup-ba: food, eat, take my clothes off (normally socks, but can apply to pretty much any object of clothing)
Hot: hot, steam, fire, firetruck
Bah: bus, truck (he said "boo bah" for a while for "school bus" but has somehow left that phrase aside completely now)
Cookie: cookie
and that's about all. Every single thing he says includes some configuration of the above words. Which means that food, water, screwdriver--what else does one need in life?
Posted by mryonker at 08:56 AM | Comments (4)
December 10, 2005
LOVE! BLOGS!
This is why I love blogs. So. Much.
(lookit. I KNOW I've got the "so" with out the "...that." Just deal. I've been reading student papers for two weeks straight; gimmee some slack.)
People are posting reading notes for me, and they don't even know it.
Much obliged, Chris.
Posted by mryonker at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2005
santa rants
Normally I don’t do product reviews here; in fact, I’ve never really done such a thing except to gush uncontrollably about my iPod mini, or possibly complain about my ancient digital camera, etc.
I don’t imagine that this post will develop into more than anything but a rant, either, but hopefully something within the rant might help someone else. Oh, who am I kidding. It’s just a rant.
So yesterday I spent doing Santa’s work. Which, in this lovely technological age, involves batteries, unintelligible technical instructions, and much cursing. My very lovely, and very puerile (in a GOOD way, a fun way) father who is way off in Iowa gets great ideas for Christmas presents, and this year found mp3 (SanDisk Sansa e100 512 MB) players for the older girls in the family. So he sends them to me first, so that I can load them up with music for Charlotte and Hannah. I am, of course, happy, and excited even, to do this, because I know well their taste in music and already have most of it on my iPod for Hannah. (This also means that I can take Backstreet Boys off the iPod!! Yay!! Justin Timberlake, however, is staying put.)
So, since I have a spiffy iBook, I’m thinking: plug n play, drag n drop, bada boom, bada bing, I’m done.
And for the most part, it could have worked that way, except for a couple of bumps in the road:
The large majority of what I have in iTunes for Hannah has been purchased from iTunes. This, of course, moves quite swiftly to the iPod. But because I’m such a trusting soul, I figured it won’t matter—it’s a music player, right? I bought the music, right? I can put it on the music player, it doesn’t have to be an iPod, right?
Wrong. I am now quite schooled about DRM and AAC protected files. I’m also quite schooled in matters of hymn, jhymn, and the fact that jhymn still is not up with iTunes 6, which I think I downloaded last week or something (insert favorite expletive here).
Expletive, expletive.
So, a dear friend, who shall remain nameless so when they come to haul me off to prison I won’t have narked on anyone, had just showed me the wonder that is LimeWire not a week before. I entered that murky world, feeling sneaky and paranoid.
And spent an ENTIRE DAY finding music. O.M.G I found stuff that I’ve wanted for SO LONG and just have put off getting. I found stuff I didn’t know I wanted. And then I remembered I was supposed to be finding stuff for the girls. Whoops.
So I was able to fill up the mp3s with the greatest stuff—and I didn’t even have to go through and convert anything etc.
Which is where we come to the next bump: once you drag n drop files onto the player, good luck trying to get them off. On a mac, anyway. There were some lame ads programmed into the thing, and I inadvertently put the non-radio version of Black Eyed Peas’ “Hey Mama” (dis dat shit [not beat] dat make ya groove, mama") onto one of them. So I’m thinking: drag n drop to the trash, right?
Nope. The files would be gone from the file window thing, but when I unplugged the USB and turned on the player, all the songs were STILL THERE.
I finally gave up and plugged the thing into B’s PC, and found that the mac actually creates an INVISIBLE trash folder on the device, and instead of deleting the files just moves them into that INVISIBLE folder. And of course the damn thing cannot read folder names—I cares not for HOW you arrange your stuff; if it’s on there, it plays it in alpha order of the song title. Even if it’s in a folder called trash. Sheesh. The user manual says to delete files you must highlight the file and hit the delete key, which B claims the mac doesn’t have, that they’ve simply named the backspace key “delete.” This of course is looking like it proves his theory. So to put files ON I can use the mac, but to delete them I have to use the PC.
Expletive.
But, now that I’ve figured everything out, I’m pretty happy. And I like the mushroom headphones, even though at first glance they scared me because of their rather invasive-like nature and strange rubbery condom-y cover things.
>sigh<
So. In other news, the well ran dry last night because our toilet stuck and ran for a few hours once everyone went to bed. B, who can sleep through a 3-way screaming fight over Saturday morning cartoon options; who can sleep through my not-so-subtle kitchen banging, washer-dryer-and-dishwasher-running, my vacuum running, etc; he hears the well pump’s repeated turning off and on at 4 in the morning and gets up to turn it off. And thankfully this morning the well has recovered. I wish he would have told me that that was a possibility. I laid awake the rest of the night worrying about how we’d survive until the spring without running water.
Posted by mryonker at 10:03 AM | Comments (5)