September 28, 2007

Triathlon Training: Family Endurance

Many of you were entranced with the story of Finn training for his first full-length triathlon, especially when an innocent whiff of sexuality reared its head: the presence of a girl, whose entry into the race prompted Finn to scoff at the idea of participating in the event as part of a relay team. If Allie was going to swim 600 yards, bike 16 miles and run 3 miles by herself, Finn wasn’t going to let the fact that she’d be ahead of him and he’d be staring at her rear the entire race deter him from doing the same. That may have been a motivating factor, actually.

You’ll remember that once Finn decided to compete, Bill decided to devote his spare time to coaching Finn through his training, sacrificing his own participation in the race.

At first the training was hardly noticeable. Bill and Finn would get up early to swim or run; on the weekends they’d take a long bike ride.

As the race drew nearer, their sessions grew longer. I was able to overlook the time they spent going over schedules and strategy as long as it didn’t interfere with my plans.

And then it did. One Sunday Bill and Finn set off on a brick (a bike-run combo) later than I thought healthy, given the temperature, or wise, given my impending weekly run to Publix and subsequent need for strong, energetic males to help unload a van full of groceries. When I pulled in the driveway I was greeted only by Porter and Drew, who are enthusiastic about unloading but less interested in the putting away. Plus, they are careless about egg and light bulb transport.

When Bill and Finn came home I got the usual excuses: a flat tire, extra-hot temperatures. While I knew that these things happen to triathletes in training, I also recognized that perhaps things were getting out of hand. Finn hadn’t started his summer reading or touched his drums in weeks.

We went on our annual beach trip the week before the race, and Bill tried to keep Finn on his training regime. But Finn hadn’t seen his friends all year, there was body surfing to do, a dance contest to organize, and Bill began to question Finn’s commitment to the project.

I didn’t realize how emotionally invested Bill was in Finn’s performance until halfway through beach week, when Bill called me from the other house where the ladies and I were knitting and chatting, to see if Finn needed to go to the hospital. They’d just returned from a brick and Finn was lying on the sofa.

“Honey, I think he needs to see a doctor, quick,” Bill said urgently. “We got off the bike and started the run and he complained he was dizzy and I about had to carry him back to the house. He was having trouble breathing. Maybe it’s a heart murmur, or he’s punctured his lung. Or wait, do you know the symptoms of a stroke?”

I looked at Finn. He was sprawled across the couch, sweaty, closing his eyes, and panting dramatically.

I looked from him to Bill, my soulmate, the man who took pain pills after his vasectomy only because I threatened to stomp his jewels if he didn’t. My lover, who believes hospitals are where you go only when you’re bleeding out or having major surgery.

“Let me check him out,” I said.

I turned to Finn.

“Hey, dude, how late did you stay up last night?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Pretty late.”

“What did you eat for breakfast this morning?”

“I didn’t exactly feel like having much breakfast,” Finn said.

“So exactly how much food went into your belly this morning?” I asked.

“None,” he said sheepishly.

“Did you use your inhaler before your ride?”

“I forgot,” Finn said.

“How about fluids? Did you drink any water or Propel this morning?”

“I drank a little during our ride.”

I tuned back to Bill.

“Honey, you’re being a dumbass,” I told him gently. “This is not a boy with a punctured lung or having a stroke. This is a tired boy who biked and ran on an empty stomach, without using his inhaler or drinking enough water. If you take him to the hospital I am staying here. You two know better than this.”

To his credit, later in the day Bill apologized for overreacting and promised to spend the afternoon NOT thinking about the race. Instead he spent it drinking gin and making googly eyes with me.

It wasn’t the last drama we’d experience before the race.

************************************

Next up: The Race Is On (or, How Anne Saves The Day With Her Anal-Retentive First-Aid Kit)

A year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: My Special Club (perfect timing for this one)

September 25, 2007

Corralling The Horses

If you’ve been worried about the the right age to teach your children “Found a Peanut” or “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall,” you can mark that off your to-do list. I’m happy to report that if your kids are exposed to a wide variety of wholesome friends they’ll learn those songs and many other, equally irritating ditties as well. I think it happens by osmosis.

We discovered this on our way home from Auburn, where we’d gone to visit Bill’s parents, although everyone else seemed to think the football game was the main event.

Sunday Finn was in a Dramamine-induced coma in the back seat after a morning of vomiting, so Porter and Drew had to compete only with each other to be heard on the way home.

After a stop at McDonald’s, the boys were eating their chicken strips. Drew started cracking up.

“Hey Porter, I’m eating female chicken,” he said. “The box says ‘all white premium chicken breast’ so I’m eating a lady chicken’s boob!”

The duo started laughing so hard that I was forced to place a moratorium on further boob/tit/breast talk, for fear the guys would choke.

I’m getting ever so tired of hearing the conversation that passes for witty banter among the third grade set; it always includes guns and blood or body parts (or a combination of all three). I turned up Amy Winehouse on the iPod and tried to ignore my offspring.

Later in the trip, though, I learned that Porter has a cut of unknown origin on his penis.

In the middle of the twins’ babbling I heard Drew command, “Porter, put your horse back in the barn.” This grabbed my attention. We don’t have a horse; this is universal Glamore code for “put your pecker back in your pants immediately.” (Are we the only family who has invented a code for this instruction? It will be embarrassing if none of the rest of you have.)

“Porter, why is your horse out of the barn?” I demanded, without turning around, because I’ve made that mistake before.

“Because it has a cut on it and I was looking to see if the cut has gotten any better,” he answered.

“It looks just the same to me, Porter, so put it back in your pants,” Drew said derisively. “You’re always looking at it.”

“No one needs to examine his penis in the car. Wait until you get home and do that in the bathroom,” I decreed.

“I don’t know how you got a cut on your pecker anyway,” Drew said. “That’s stupid.”

“I don’t know either, okay,” Porter said peevishly. “Just leave me alone.”

There was silence for about a mile.

Then Porter spoke up again. “Mom, I want to change my name. Can I?”

“Sure,” I said tiredly.

“Okay, I want everyone to call me Porter-is-fun-dot-com Glamore. And now it’s time to sing.”

And then the ditties began.

When traveling with boys, start off well-rested, as you’ll need every ounce of energy to rein in their more outlandish behavior during the journey.

Two years ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Cocoa Puffs and Lady Lumps

September 24, 2007

What Not To Wear: Perfume Edition

I’ve already illustrated what not to wear in bed (and conversely, what you should wear). Today we’ll move on to “What Not To Wear: Perfume Edition.”

During Finn’s drum lesson Friday, I hustled over to the Galleria to Sephora to try out Gwen Stefani’s new perfume, Lamb. Usually I buy perfume based on scent alone. The fact that Elizabeth Taylor, J. Lo, and Britney hawked perfume didn’t persuade me to run out and try them.

It’s different, however, when a celebrity I truly adore, like Sarah Jessica Parker or Gwen Stefani comes out with a scent. I desperately tried to like SJP’s Lovely, but it smelled like worn soccer cleats on me.

So I was thrilled to hear that Gwen had a new perfume, because I feel as if we have a cosmic connection. We both have hot husbands and small titties and frequently dye our hair and… well, I can’t sing, and I don’t have a band, but when Kingston gets older I can give Gwen tons of useful information about how to teach him to fold his towel after his bath and pick his nose in private and put the lid down on the potty and other life skills.

Anyway, whether you’re a Gwen fan or not, a girl couldn’t help but try the perfume after seeing this ad:

Who wouldn’t want to smell like that?

I was heady with anticipation when I got to Sephora, but when I spritzed the scent on my wrist I wasn’t sure it was jiving with my complex chemical makeup. Of course, you must give anything a chance, so after Finn and I got home from drums I asked Bill to smell it.

He paused from making gin and tonics and gave my wrist a sniff.

“I feel like I’ve smelled that before,” he said thoughtfully.

I doubted he’d already smelled the latest scent from Gwen Stefani. He’s hardly on the cutting edge of pop culture. Remember how long it took him to figure out that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were dating? But he was holding my wrist and smelling it and looking off into the distance with a furrowed brow. It was confusing.

“I’ve got it,” he said triumphantly, dropping my arm and reaching for the lime. “It smells like a girl I dated in the past.”

Damn. I love you, Gwen, but I won’t be wearing Lamb.

A year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: In Which I Discover That Porter Has Been Hired By The Government

September 21, 2007

Missing HTML: Reward If Found!

Bill says watching me manage my blog is akin to witnessing dogs mating: there are shudders and misfires, yelping and awkward pauses, but in the end a post or a puppy is produced.

Although I’ve been blogging for more than two years, I was 37 when I started.  HTML and Flickr have all been highly mysterious to me, and every week I struggle with something else that seems like it should be elementary, but it ends up taking me hours of playing with codes and applications to figure out.  None of this comes naturally.

Perhaps those of us who are old enough to have witnessed the mind-blowing transition from rotary to push-button telephones blew the neural pathway that instantly grasps the most basic points of computer programming. (Heartbreakingly, my parents were not earl adopters of the new phone technology, despite my pleas that we were wasting more time than most people because we dialed of 9’s so often, which took forever.)

My latest challenge arose when I was trying to upload a tiny image from another website to mine and link it back to that same website.  I do that all the time, but this time the site asked me to “upload the image and save it to my server” and not to link directly to the page itself.

Now see, I have a good grasp of osmosis, and I can give a talk about the birds and the bees, and I successfully broke a son of the habit of popping out of bed at night.  I am capable.

But I’m not quite sure what “my server” is and a fair amount of googling didn’t help.  I found other pages containing instructions for uploading graphics, but all seemed to assume that anyone capable of blinking could upload an image to her server.

By dinnertime, I had uploaded the image to my desktop and fiddled with it, looking for its code, with no success.

“I’ve uploaded a graphic to the desktop and I can’t find its HTML,” I complained to Bill as I grated Parmesan to sprinkle on our Linguini With Bacon and Roasted Red Pepper.  “And I don’t know what ‘my server’ is.  Is that my computer?  Is that WordPress?”

Finn was pouring the milks for dinner, and I heard him mutter, “I thought I was the server around here,” but I ignored him.

“And even if I knew what my server was, I’d still be in a mell of a hess* because I can’t find the HTML for the picture.  It’s making me insane,” I continued.  “Can you call twinsanity and tell them dinner’s ready?”

Once we sat down, Bill was ready to address the issue.

“Have you vacuumed under your bitmap?” he asked, trying not to laugh.   ”Or you could try bleaching the jpeg.”  He was spouting nonsense; he considers this type of talk foreplay.

“Ha ha,” I said.  “You won’t be getting any until I figure this out.”

Three hours later, the kitchen was clean, laundry was running, the boys were asleep and I either figured out or finessed  a way to create some code that ran the graphic off my site, but linked it to the other one.

I found the HTML: a big victory for a forty-year-old blogger making her way through the blogosphere  one small step at a time.

* My mom used to say this in the days of shag carpets and rotary phones; no idea how it popped out of my mouth in the new millennium.

Two years ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Blender

September 19, 2007

An Ode To Osmosis

I remember learning about osmosis, the process by which water moves across a membrane from an area of low concentration to an area of high concentration, in Mrs. B’s 7th grade biology class.

The idea was difficult for me to grasp, and my mother spent hours with me in the den going over the difference in a hypertonic solution and a hypotonic solution while I cried salty tears that I now know were hypertonic with salt compared to the water in the dog bowl.

I’ve never had an occasion to use other concepts I learned in the class, like the stages of mitosis (anaphase, metaphase, telophase) although they rattle uselessly in my mind, taking up valuable real estate that could be put to much better use remembering that Wednesday’s soccer skills workout has been changed from 5:30 to 5:15.  Sorry, fellow carpool moms.

But osmosis!

Osmosis is useful, especially if you stretch the definition a bit.

Last night during dinner Bill asked Finn if he had done any of his homework that afternoon.  Bill had asked Finn to get his English out of the way so he’d have plenty of time to study for his Big Ass Math Test.  Math has been giving Finn quite a bit of trouble, so Bill stepped in to help strengthen his study skills.  (Out of necessity he’s picked up some “New Math” in the process, which bears no resemblance to the division and distribution that we are all familiar with.)

Finn ducked his head and said, “A little.”

I glanced to my left, where Finn’s backpack was on the kitchen floor, in the exact place he had slung it when he’d come home from school.  It was zipped up tight.

“Finn, have you learned about osmosis in school yet?” I asked.

“About what?”

“Osmosis.  It’s when a substance transfers through a membrane to the other side of the membrane.  For example, if your English notebook had somehow gotten out of your backpack by moving through the canvas membrane which covers the backpack, and not by a student, such as yourself, unzipping the backpack and removing the notebook through the hole that was thereby created, that would be osmosis.”

Finn looked at me and then saw his backpack on the ground.  His cheeks got red.

“And so, now that you understand the concept of osmosis,” I continued, “I ask you, did your English notebook osmosize out of your backpack and into your room where you studied it, or did you just lie to your father when he asked whether you had done your homework?”

I paused for effect.

“Osmosis or lie?” I asked, staring at Finn across my plate of Chicken with Noodles and Al Fredo Sauce.

He looked down.

“In this situation I would so love to be able to say osmosis,” he said.

Whereupon we banished him from the table, and all sorts of unpleasant parental maneuvers intended to drill obedience, truthfulness and self-discipline into every fiber of Finn’s being ensued.

Today he came home and confessed that he never did study for that math test.

Some qualities can’t be forced onto a person, through osmosis or otherwise.

A year ago in My Tiny Kingdom: Finn’s Fashion Wisdom