What you find-ah, What you feel now, What you know-a, To be real!

Didn't expect this, but I've become worried/uptight not hearing from Mom and Dad yet. They left Saturday for the 'big trip' and I haven't heard from them since. Stressin' me out. I expected to get one initial call saying how the first day was etcetera. Now it is occupying my thoughts about once an hour or more. I left a message on their cell phone and changed our voice message greeting to something simple so they didn't have to sit through "Jack" to leave a message, but nothing. -- I have found that the morning people at the gym are much more pleasant than in the afternoon. It's like we're all doing our thing with grins, joking about how our work out is already done before work, and after we can do whatever we want. What a relief. One lady even called it addictive. It's so un-crowded too! I decided to try swimming some laps today, since we can hardly ever get a lane in the afternoon, and the pool was empty. Swam some baby laps, stretched in the jacuzzi, and inhaled the strongest eucalyptus ever in the steam room. I sat in there with another swimmer, Vicki, and we didn't even barely get to the steam before I had to vacate. I think this week will be a swim week. -- Old building crud again. Some pipe burst spilling lots of water onto the roof over the weekend. On one of the hottest days of the year, this has adversely affected our air conditioning. Peds and other areas have none and their areas are sucking any we may have enjoyed away. Oh joy, now all we need is a good hot stinker in the room of rest to add to the hamster cage smell coming from the wall down the hall where some poor rat has obviously perished. Oh, the sights and sounds of the clinic compare not a bit to the smells.


Word(s) of the day: JUXTAPOSITION


Lexie log: Friday afternoon Lexie got to spend a wee bit of time with Grampa Dad while he was over doing emailish things in preparation for la journee. They played to 'ribbit' game and she laughed hysterically. As he got into his truck to drive home, Lexie kept telling him, "Wait a minute, " and "Come back". -- We have watched the"I'm a good little Traveler" at least once a day. It is done so well, and she just enjoys watching it. We keep telling her that we are all going on an airplane trip, and I wonder if she understands. I think she does, she just hasn't got the hang of time yet, so she's never sure when we will be going. Funny how as children we work so hard to learn the concept of future and past and then as adults work hard at living in the now. -- Saturday Lexie played the role of terrible two as I shopped at Fashion Bug and Daddy had charge of her. She didn't want to be without either of us, so if she was outside with Daddy, she wanted Momma, and visa versa. The attitude continued as we were turning in pop cans. She didn't just want to stand around, kept urging me to, "Come on, Momma!" All the while heading for the parking lot pavement. I told her, sternly, to stay on the sidewalk and come back. She overstepped her bounds, and the curb. She got a swat on the tail, and suddenly became interested in what I was doing and how the can crunching machine worked. I never was much on spanking, but this butt swat thing over the last week has made such a tremendous difference in her respect for authority and knowing where the boundaries are. I'm quite sure that it doesn't even remotely hurt, physically, how can it with the diaper padding? I always thought she would hate me and be so hurt by it, but that's obviously a delusion I had. She respects that I mean business, and we go on. -- Sunday, I spent the whole morning cleaning the pool, raking and cleaning up the yard around the pool, and running out three gallon buckets of hot tap water to warm up the cold hose water. I think I had to have carted out close to 20 gallons of hot water. Then we covered the pool and went to Gramma Keller's for a visit. Wow, does she not ever, ever want to wear any form of shoes! She actually has to have her feet touch the blacktop and sense how uncomfortable it is before we can put back on the shoes she's just removed while sitting in her car seat. I never wanted to wear shoes growing up, my feet were tough as nails, I could walk across California blacktop in summertime. Daddy isn't very thrilled about her footloose and fancy free shoe attitude. She walked all over Freddie's barefoot and had black feet that we cleaned with those handy dandy sanitary wipes most store provide for wiping down the shopping cart handles. Back at Gramma's we inherited Aunt Patty's bean bag. We played for a little while at Gramma's then went home and spent a glorious hour splashing and staying cool in our pool. It was wonderful! She slid down the slide and I splashed her, we played and played. It was tough to get her to come out. She hadn't napped all day. She finally started nodding off during her dinner, but hit a rebound and stayed up until bedtime.

Today I'm grateful for Frank and Lexie, weekends, water, morning workouts, beanbags, air conditioning, blue blue skies, music, and swimming.