The People in Your Neighborhood

Hopefully I have just corrupted the rest of your brains into singing "....the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neigh-bor-hoo-ood...the people that you meet each day." From Sesame Street. Oh, come on. You know it.

We had a concert in the park tonight. What a beautiful evening. I made a variation on this salad tonight. Good summer fare.

Saw all sorts of locals, which is so fun. We are lucky to live in a nice little village with lots of nice folks.

I finally got to meet my "virtual" neighbor! So lovely in person. What a treat.

My son was off the hook tonight. Running, running, running. One of our neighbors, who lives up the street (and around the corner) has a lovely daughter who is, I think, about 5 years older than my son. He was literally stalking her at the playground during the concert tonight...calling her name, running after her, inserting himself when she was hanging out with friends. No shame at all. How good is it to be four? (I should add she was a dear, being highly tolerant of all his craziness.)

We're going to have an older-woman problem when he's older. I know it.

Dark Chocolate: The Answer? Or the Question?

There are a few things that I think reveal much about a person.

Some key indicators, if you will, are likes, or dislikes. C and I have often commented that one can likely boil down a psychological profile to simple everyday preferences that somehow really strongly indicate a personality "type."

One of these is chocolate. Think about it. You know people who:

• Don't enjoy chocolate at all.
• Prefer chocolate bars/candy over other chocolate foodstuffs, or conversely, have an aversion to the solid stuff.
• Have a preference for dark, milk, or white chocolate (white chocolate can be considered a chocolate for those about to debate it...the difference is that white chocolate doesn't contain chocolate liquor; but it should - unless it's made cheaply - contain cacao butter).

We are dark chocolate people. O eats it too, though he is not as discretionary as C & I are. I personally have zero desire to eat any variation of milk chocolate. I'll typically go no-chocolate before I go milk chocolate. And well beyond a Hershey Special bar...give me 70%+ cocoa and I'm happiest. Not entirely bitter, but a somewhat bitter is just fine. Too sweet or full of non-natural additives...ick.

I truly believe that dark chocolate is a personality "type". Ok, yes...right now it's being marketed as being good for your health, blah blah blah. Maybe it is, but it's right up there with me liking pomegranates before that news broke.

So what does it mean? Now, no one take offense. This is hardly scientific; I've done zero research on this. C and I feel that you can cut a wide swath through our friends and family and...yup...dark chocolate. It's like there's a gene or something. We don't discriminate, I mean, hey, we have plenty of non-dark chocolaters in our life, but it just so happens we run in more "dark chocolate" circles.

Here are a couple links I just dug up, realizing that it's always a little more interesting with some back-up:

• Kind of based on your "chocolate soul"
• A quiz to find out what your preference is (well I would imagine you know that already)

Are we crazy? Do you agree?

Renovation: Now it looks like a house.

What did I post last on this? Oh yes. That gorgeous Tyvek exterior. Ahem.

Let's move on.

We have siding now. We choose tight-knot cedar with a bleaching oil application, one of the good recommendations from our contractor (as opposed to a good bunch of stuff that...ugh. I don't need to get into all that now). Here is our "address" side of the house. Note that we plan on (eventually) power-washing the paint off the brick chimney to match the extension.


Ok, if you moved left from the photo above, you get this view (below)...ultimately the entrance to what will be our front porch. The deck--what's left of it--is coming down.



Keep going around to the back of the house and this is behind our new dining room, with the french doors. When these pictures were taken, we were planning a brick patio. Now we have it ...but you'll have to wait for an updated set of shots to see it. You can see all our skylights from this angle.


Here is the driveway side of the house (to the right, around the corner of the first photo). No garage doors yet. (Still! Next week, we think.)


Here is an interior shot of what the old "sunroom" area looks like now that the renovation is relatively complete inside. This is the block of windows to the left on the photo above.


Next week, after a little painting and additions, I hope to post the whole exterior set. Interior...well, we're working on that.

G: Reversal of Fortune

Don't misinterpret that. We're beyond lucky to have this little girl and love her to bits.

I think I may have mentioned in an earlier post that she was sleeping nine hours, eating well, and even doing a #2 on a regular basis. Clearly, I was asking for the jinx.

That came to a grinding halt in the last week as the train seemingly went off the rails. Now:

• she is not sleeping well
• she it not taking more than 3 oz at a time
• she's much fussy than she was
• she's spitting up more that she was
• when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she's almost in a painful "startle" reflex, crying and inconsolable
• she demands a bottle in the middle of the night since she wakes so much

She does have a bit of a cold as well, that I assume is residual damage from her brother's cough last week. But that has really just been the last three days.

Allergy? Formula? Ear infection? Teething? Lactose intolerant? All those hypotheses were in round one. Yesterday, I took her to our pediatrician (who we love, if I haven't mentioned that).

He pretty much ruled out everything mentioned above. (I personally was thinking ear infection, but they were clean.)

Based on all we told him, he had three theories:

1. It's a sleep problem. She doesn't self-soothe yet. We know this is ultimately going to be an issue. But, he felt there was a bit too much going on with the eating to mean this was the crux of the issue.
2. It's a virus. Possible, he said, but no fever, so it's a long shot.
3. It's reflux. Meaning, the gastro-intestinal variety (actually I'm not sure what other types of reflux are). This is the age it starts, around 4 - 5 months, and since she seems more disturbed at night, he feels like it's making sense.
   

So, I have a prescription for baby. That's the easy part. It's less of a dose than infant Tylenol - a liquid Pepcid. The other thing to give her...Mylanta. Three and a half droppers full. That is just foul torture, for all of us.

We'll see. There have been very minor improvements here and there today. Cross your fingers.

I wish you could talk, baby girl. Makes us so sad.

On Pins and Needles

I have been missing for a few days...mostly due to the fact that I've been trying to be typing as little as possible. I woke up on Thursday with a ridiculous stiff neck. It really hurt.

I did the usual: hot shower, asked C to give me a backrub with some anti-pain herbal oil, tried not to strain it, took some Motrin. Which is tricky when you have a baby that is hitting 17-18 pounds and is a bit needy lately (more detail on that in the next post), having to be picked up a lot and soothed, waking in the night, and generally not leaving you with the ability to sleep well.

It felt a bit better on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, I was quite stiff again but put on a brave face and was feeding G at the breakfast table when she jerked and I had to react. The pain was so horrible I think I cried for 15 minutes. At this point, I figured I'd better do something about it.

I reached out to friends, neighbors, and co-workers for recommendations on a chiropractor. I'd had an accident over 15 years ago, and a great chiropractor set my two vertabrae straight that were out of alignment. But, that was in CT. (I should say that I did get one or two great recommendations, particularly one from a friend who had almost the exact same situation she needed help with. So they are filed for future use. Thank you!)

I got to thinking about acupuncture. I had acupuncture once before--long story short, I was taking a mental health day and had a great session, then walked out to find 7 messages on my cell that my major client had fired us. Nice timing. Needless to say, my relaxation and comfort was short-lived.

I am not one to take pills or pain killers if I can avoid it. This was no exception, and I honestly am not sure what motivated me toward acupuncture over chiropractic, but I found her cell number and it turns out she practices in Dobbs Ferry. I was able to get in on Tuesday.

The basic principle of acupuncture, from Wikipedia:

Health is a condition of balance of yin and yang within the body. Particularly important in acupuncture is the free flow of Qi, a difficult-to-translate concept that pervades Chinese philosophy and is commonly translated as "vital energy"). Qi is immaterial and hence yang; its yin, material counterpart is Blood (capitalized to distinguish it from physiological blood, and very roughly equivalent to it). Acupuncture treatment regulates the flow of Qi and Blood, tonifying where there is deficiency, draining where there is excess, and promoting free flow where there is stagnation. An axiom of the medical literature of acupuncture is "no pain, no blockage; no blockage, no pain."

I wound up getting around 20 needles, I think. That's an acupuncture needle, over on the right. They are small, and some you don't feel going in at all, some you feel varying degrees of a pinch. I had a few put in my ankles--she explained that was to draw the energy/blockages out through the bottom; that if you just focused on the localized area, it could backfire.

Once I was set up with the needles, I settled there for about a half hour-45 minutes. (I was face down on a massage/therapy table, so the only part is that the head rest does get a little uncomfortable after a while of not moving.)

She took the needles out and then--I don't know how to really describe this--used her hands to somehow focus the energy in my chest/shoulder/neck area. Probably for about 10 minutes.

How did it work? I started the session not being able to turn my head to the left more than 10 degrees, and I couldn't lift my chin. I left with motion to turn my head to my shoulder and was able to look to the sky. Wow.

There was a little residual bump on the back of my head where one of the needles was; she noted that happened on occasion, and that my condition should continue to improve over the next 24 hours. It has.

I'm going back next Friday, as the stress, baby-carrying, and sleep situation doesn't have a lot of promise in the next handful of days. She thinks she can get rid of "it"...meaning my residual injury. Will keep you posted.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Why Everyone Should Own an American Express Card

I've always loved AmEx. So does C.

9am this morning (yes, a Saturday), I get a call. Answer the phone and I hear:
"Please wait for an important message from American Express." So, I wait.

A rep gets on and tells me she's from account security. Uh-oh.

Seems as if someone got a hold of my account number and has been attempting to charge a few things to my card. I say attempting because as it turns out, AmEx was able to realize that it wasn't me for whatever reason, and nothing was actually cleared. They tried to use it at sears.com, 800flowers, netflix...places I don't really shop at.

I got off the phone in 9 minutes and 10 seconds. In that time:

• I was alerted that fraudulent charges were attempted on my card.
  
• I was given detail of these charges to see if I could identify them.
  
• My card was cancelled.
• I was transferred to another rep that actually knew what the situation was.
• This rep issued a new card and arranged delivery.
• I'll have a new card by Monday EOD via UPS (no cost for the rush delivery).
• All this was done very courteously and professionally.
  

Seriously. And I don't even have a fancy card...just a rewards green.

I am rarely impressed (genuinely) with customer service. People don't pay enough attention any more. American Express is one of the very few that have never disappointed me.

O: Crazy Hat Day

Today was crazy hat day at O's camp. Per the calendar.

Now, most parents know that if you need to bring something to school, even if it's noted on a calendar they gave you a month before, the school realizes you're totally preoccupied with life and sends a reminder. I did not get a reminder yesterday. So I figured they were making hats at camp. (Admittedly, I am a first-time camp mom. Maybe my expectations are off.)

This morning, as always, I looked at the camp calendar to tell him if it's "wishing it was winter" day, or what he's having for lunch, etc. So I mentioned the crazy hat day to him and said, "you'll probably make a really cool hat today."

"NOOOOOOO! I have to bring a hat!"

Oh, for the love of God. Good thing I'm crafty. In the ten minutes before the bus came, I grabbed one of his summer hats and a handful of pipe cleaners. I quickly whipped up a "sun hat"...meaning a sun affixed to and hovering over the top of his head.

How'd I do? He said a lot of people thought it was silly. Indeed.