Things I’ve learned in the last two days

(Some of these things I already knew, but that doesn’t stop me from learning them again.)

Junior High band concerts exist for the purpose of teaching beginning students how to properly behave while performing. This makes them good venues for teaching other kids how audience members should behave at concerts. Unfortunately that is not a restful experience. Next time I’ll limit myself to one learning performer and one learning audience member.

Gleek can not treat music as a passive experience. Music is to be sung to, or danced to, or clapped to, or bounced to. She loves music dearly, but she is compelled to participate. She’ll make a great learning performer, just now she is not a respectful audience member.

Reading about Harry Potter’s dead parents just before one of the kids discovered the heart monitor was an unhappy congruence. They were all a little worried until I explained that I was just spying on my heart to see what it is doing. I haven’t heard about it since, so hopefully none of them have acquired new fears about this.

When they assured me that wearing the heart monitor was completely painless, they forgot to mention sticker removal. They also forgot to mention that these particular stickers sometimes cause enough skin irritation that they leave little blisters around the edges of where they were located. True it isn’t really painful, but it is annoying. And I’ll be wearing high collared shirts until the red marks go away. (A moment of insight this evening made me realize that it was not the stickers themselves which caused the red rings. It was a chemical reaction between the “sticky” and the “sticky remover.” Prior to using the “sticky remover” there was no more irritation than that caused by a bandaid. The scientist in me totally wants to test this theory, but not enough to give myself more chemical burns.)

Good friends make a world of difference. This includes my backyard neighbor who spontaneously invited me and all my kids over for dinner yesterday, thus saving me from attending the Junior High concert with children who were starving as well as hyper-active. And the friends who followed Howard home to keep us company when I was ready to melt into a little puddle of fatigue and stress. And the friend who called this evening just to talk and was completely understanding that even though I wanted to talk, I had to manage all my evening chaos.

Gleek and Patches both need more Mommy time.

Link and Kiki both need help with photography projects.

Cub scouts really enjoy pretending to be injured while thier friends pretend to administer first aid. They particularly liked the life threatening injuries or the ones that had blood to be staunched.

I like going shopping with Howard when we’re both relaxed and interested in enjoying the experience. Going out to lunch with Howard is fun too. He leaves tomorrow for the last trip of this year. I’ll be glad when he gets home.