Panniers are here! Thanks Mom!!!

It's been quite a long week, so I am going to keep this brief...

My awesome mother ordered an early birthday for me a couple weeks ago: bike panniers! They are beautiful. They come in pairs, but my things for work fit nicely into one bag, so I will use them one at a time.

The bags are waterproof and they latch onto the back rack on my bike. There are a couple of pockets built into the inside of the bag, which is one of my favorite features!

(Many thanks to Steve from my office, who loaned me a very nice pannier while mine were on order.)

Now I just need to get a seat cover that matches the rest of the red/black theme going on. If I were a more talented seamstress, I would whip something up. But since that's not one of my talents, I've just been avoiding the problem... :o)

Front deck

We've been working on the front deck lately. It was a project I thought we would finish last fall, but an unexpected turn of events delayed our plans considerably. Nevertheless, we're back on task and the work progresses.

Here's a glance at what the front deck use to look like. As you can somewhat see, there was a wrought iron railing on the deck. If you look closely, you might be able to tell that the whole deck is slanting forward:

The picture below is from October. It shows the deck stripped down and leveled. The deck remained in this state from October through June. (Nine months. Ugh.):

Here's the deck again, with the new railing and lattice work. It has also been stained. We haven't redone the stairs yet, nor put in the railings for the stairs. Notice also the beautiful red tree:

Here's the deck from the front door. You can see a couple of solar-powered lanterns on a couple of the posts. These are the lanterns we've decided to go with, but we need to purchase another set of them for the rest of the posts:

I love the stain on the deck. I think it's beautiful. But the important thing is that the deck is level and it's safe!

Planter's Boxes

Despite his temporary disability, my handy man make some planter's boxes a couple weekends ago. My parents in-law are building a new house and had a bit of leftover wood, which they generously gave to us so we could build the boxes.

Here are the boxes in the backyard, all set up:

The first box (below) is full of tomato plants. They also came from my parents in law. They were all "volunteer" plants -- i.e. they just showed up in the garden, unplanned. My in-laws do a lot of gardening every year and they plant a lot of tomatoes, so it's not uncommon to see some volunteers. This year they had a couple dozen tomato volunteers all around the yard. I took 16 of them home for my boxes; about 12 survived the move. I have no idea which kinds of tomatoes they are! Could be Roma's or cherries or early girls or golden or... you get the idea. Hopefully there's a variety:


The next box has several lettuce varieties (in the front) and some squash (in the back). The squash were all volunteers in our compost pile, so I don't know which kind they are, either:


(Sorry this third picture is at a weird angle.) The third box has another tomato, plus a basil and a cantaloupe. I got the tomato because we don't know which varieties are in the volunteers, and I wanted at least one early girl. I've never grown cantaloupe before, so it's a new experiment:


In the last box, I planted six squash seeds -- three yellow, and three zucchini:


The coolest part (so far)? I took those five pictures last Sunday. When I came out to water on Monday night, three of the squash seeds had suddenly sprouted into plants!

I am really enjoying gardening. The boxes make it much easier.

Damaged Goods

N8 and I had our very first ultrasound last week! It was on Nathan's leg. His right leg, with particular focus on his Achilles tendon.

But let me back up...

Over a month ago, on a fateful Thursday night, The Bear decided to play a 9pm pick-up game of volleyball at the church building. I'm an old lady who goes to bed early, so I wished him a good time and got ready for bed. He hopped in his zippy little car and was off to the game.

Since I wasn't there, the following details are based on several eye-witness accounts of The Event: It was a busy night at the church building. There was a volleyball net and a volleyball, and a throng of people gathered on the court. The ball was served. Points were scored.

N8's team lost 3 games in a row, and was lining up to lose a fourth. All of a sudden, the volleyball sailed over the net, headed toward N8. He stepped back to volley the serve back across the net, and... WHAM! According to the victim, "It felt like someone kicked me in the back of the leg."

The ball fell to the floor. N8 started rubbing his leg and glaring at his teammates, wondering who delivered the blow. No confessions were made. (Future details would reveal that N8 had not, in fact, been kicked by someone.) The Bear continued rubbing, and when the pain wouldn't subside, he hobbled off the court. In the end, a friend had to drive him home.

I learned of the injury the next morning, when I woke Nathan up to take me to work and he informed me that he was unable to drive. Over the course of the next week, the signs of the injury became evident. His leg swelled from knee to toe, blood pooled visibly in his ankle, and there was bruising.

It was nasty.

Gentle nagging from his mom sent N8 to the doctor's office a week after the injury. The doctor diagnosed a tear in his calf muscle and sent him to the physical therapist. But the therapist disagreed, believing the Achilles tendon was damaged. She suggested an MRI. Bickering ensued between the doctors, the nagging (/hysterical) calls from mom increased exponentially, and N8 finally got an appointment with an Orthopedic specialist.

At the Ortho appointment last week, the PA and the surgeon also disagreed about the source of the injury. One said Achilles, one said the muscle. They scheduled an ultrasound of his leg. They also insisted on crutches and a boot for The Bear. (Insert small victory for the B-wife, who had been nagging about the need for crutches since week 1.)

Last Friday we went in for the ultrasound. Wednesday we sat down with the Ortho surgeon again. Results indicate a partial tear of the Achilles. Since it's not a full tear (called a rupture) N8 won't need surgery. But he will spent three more weeks with all these aides:

Then he will move to just this:

His boot has three risers in the heel which keep the weight off of the injured area. Over the course of six weeks, we will gradually remove the three wedges, and then the boot itself. After that, N8 will start a couple months (or more?) of physical therapy.

Thus it will be early September before N8 is out of the boot, and he will finish PT sometime around the holidays.

Endnotes:

1) The folks at Hope Orthopedics are awesome. Efficient, funny, very knowledgeable... Couldn't ask for a better Ortho team for my Bear.

2) I'm not worried about the injury. N8 is strong, healthy, and indomitable...

3) But I am worried about N8 getting back to work. His job will start again the end of August, when he will still be strapped into the boot and (technically) unable to drive. I can't drive him to work because (a) I don't even drive myself to work, and (b) his office is in Independence. So... ?!?!?!

4) N8 had a lot of goals for this summer, all of which are dashed to pieces. He's bummed. I'm bummed. Some goals were pure fun, like going hiking, and a camping trip with his best friend(s). Some of them were productive goals -- namely yard work and house work. A big goal for the summer was to remodel one of the bedrooms and turn it into a nursery. (The room needs new windows, insulation in the walls, and new drywall... In all, it's a complete overhaul. We have the funds to buy supplies, but not enough to hire someone else to do the work, hence frustration with Bear's brokenness.)

5) It's hard taking care of an injured boy and so many the household responsbilities.

Help me decide: Which tree?!

N8 and I purchased two trees today. One of them will go in the front yard, the other will go in the back yard. I'm having a hard time deciding which tree I want to put out front. The two trees in the pictures below are the same tree, but in different colors. They are different sizes now, but they will grow up to the same dimensions.

Here's what I'm hoping for: Will you take a look at the pictures and let me know which tree you like better? I'm just looking for votes one way or the other. Thanks!

News from the Trip, Part 3: The Melting Pot

One of the things I'm really enjoying about Washington D.C. is the diversity. Walking down the street, or sitting in a restaurant, or riding on the Metro (subway), or anything else, you pass people from all over the world. They are speaking all kinds of languages.

To some of you, that might sound kind-of annoying. I promise it's not. It's beautiful. It takes me back to the foundation of our great nation, when people came here from all over the world, shared their culture and their language and their experiences, and built this amazing country together. And now, today, we're still melting; there are still migrants coming from all over the world to build a life here.

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we went to Arlington Cemetery on Monday. (I need to do a whole separate post on Arlington, I know!) One of the things I noticed was all the different languages... even though it was a cemetery! There were tourists from many different countries who were visiting our nation's most prominent military cemetery. I passed a group of Asian youths admiring the Iwo Jima monument; a Hispanic family watching the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns; a Moroccan man enjoying the view from Arlington House; a French couple taking pictures at Kennedy's grave; and more.

You literally cannot walk down the street without hearing several different languages.

The workers at the hotel come from many different places. There are a lot of Indian people (not Native American Indian, but India Indians). In fact, of the dozen or so restaurants near the hotel, 3 of them are Indian food. The Hispanic people here come from a lot of different places -- not just Mexico.... so even the diversity is more diverse than at home :o)

So, my point is just this: As white people speaking English, we're part of the minority here, and I LOVE IT. It's educational and humbling. And it's beautiful.

News from the Trip, Part 2: Time Changes

We flew in to D.C. via Detroit. Apparently Detroit is 3 hours ahead (I thought they were just 2 hours ahead), so when we arrived at 3am Pacific Time, it was 6am local time. And the sun was getting ready to rise. It was very weird to have a sunrise at that hour. We'd watched the sun go down around 8pm when we were at home, then 7 hours later it was back up!

My sense of time was already pretty screwed up from flying in the middle of the night. That, combined with the "early" sunrise, helped the shift into the new time zone fairly quickly.

But yesterday (Monday) afternoon, I stared thinking about time "back home." For instance, when we hopped on the subway at 5:30pm, I was thinking, "Back home, it's 2:30pm. My co-workers are still at their desks, perhaps thinking about an afternoon cup of coffee; it's nearly Tea Time for Graham. Everyone still have a couple hours of work to do."

And when we got a phone call last night at 11pm, I thought, "Well, it's only 8pm back home. That's not too late to call your buddy." Of course, it would have been nice if that "buddy" here in DC had turned off the cell phone before he went to bed :o)

When I woke up this morning I considered making a phone call, but then I realized, "It's 4am back home; the person I want to call isn't awake yet! And neither is anyone else I know!"

I guess what I'm trying to get at is this: I went through a couple changes in time zone on the way out here, but I didn't really feel it, so it's weird to me that I'm actually in a different time zone! I'm surprised every time I think about what you all are doing back in Oregon.