Swimming Lessons

I went swimming at the gym for my morning exercise. First time I've hit the pool since the little guy was born. These are some lessons I learned this morning:

1. I'm not as young as I used to be
2. People twice my age could swim longer/farther than me
3. The size or flab on your arms (or gut) is no indication of how out of shape you are (evidenced again by the older people in the lanes next to me)
4. Lack of carbs and sugar at the same time makes me more tired (yay South Beach Diet?)
   
5. I felt like this after swimming 3 laps:

3 hours later, I'm still struggling to function because I'm so exhausted (fyi - I swam more than 3 laps!). Looks like more swimming is in my future! It's a fabulous cardio exercise. And legs. And arms :)

Fat Max and I

Meet Fat Max:

Today, Fat Max and I accomplished a big task that the hedge trimmer and garden shears couldn't. I tried both of these tools; they each failed me. So Fat Max came to the rescue!




The Task: trimming our neighbor's unsightly Mesquite tree that has been growing over our backyard wall for about a year now. (Please note that there is no "before" picture of the tree, as I was too eager/annoyed/irritated by this ugly beast, and so I just started without the camera)

But here is the debris from our massacre:


You might have noticed that I strategically placed 2 branches standing up against our brick wall. Yes, these branches are TALLER than our back wall. Now if you use your imagination, you can probably picture what the before tree looked like. Because here's what it looked like when Fat Max & I were done:



And here is were Fat Max & I did the most damage:


It was very fitting, too, that as we finished slicing off the last of the branches, the "Hallelujah" chorus of Handel's Messiah was being broadcast over the loudspeakers from the elementary school down the street. Yes, "hallelujah" it is done! (And "hallelujah" to the kiddos who's last day of school was today.) But unfortunately, my "hallelujah" will not last "forever and ever," as the tree will surely grow again... and our neighbor will likely not do anything about it either...and Fat Max & I will likely have to go back to work.

Unless -- we pray for a huge monsoon to come and wipe it out! Like what happened to our other neighbor's nasty palo verde tree 3 years ago:


Suh-weeet, huh? Totally uprooted! (As were about 20 other trees in the neighborhood). Can I also wish that the same thing would happen to our backyard neighbor's palm tree?


Seriously! What's up with our white trash neighbor's and their trees?? It's like we live in AJ or QC or East Mesa...or something!

Air Force One Photo"chop"

The official photo released of the April 27, 2009 fly over:


The White House has obviously never heard of Adobe Photoshop before, and instead spent $328,000+ in trying to get the photograph with the Statue of Liberty in the background. So while the White House might be in the dark about the advancements in photo editing software over the last decade, some of these people below are really talented with using Photo"chop". Maybe Obama should hire them for his next big photo gig. It'll certainly save us a lot of money in the end.

Photo"chop" #1

Photo"chop" #2

Both of those look pretty darn good in my book! I would also say I think they look better than the original because the color is a lot brighter. Worth saving us taxpayers $328,000, wouldn't you agree? But Obama loves spending the money in a time of economic crisis. With a national debt of $11.3 trillion, what's $328k? Pocket change! But I digress... back to Photo"chopping".

The following 3 Photos"chops" are more for laughs.

Haven't seen this new movie yet. But I think it a clever movie poster. Who do you think would be the director for this? Any guesses??


I never saw the movie "Soul Plane" either, but I love this artwork. You have Obama, Clinton and Snoop Dogg. Ooooh yeah!


And this one makes me laugh the most. Obama having the time of his life, while Biden is Mr. Poopy Pants. That's okay, though. It's actually better that Biden keep his lips in a frown, because everytime he opens them, something stupid comes spilling out of his mouth.

I'm not an Obama fan, and yes, I'm a proud conservative! I love this country, and hate seeing it turned into a Socialist nation, one day at a time. I'm positive our founding fathers are all rolling in their graves, several times over.

God bless the USA!

photo by Danny Green; Washington, DC; July 2007

Beanstalk, Part 2

Our little boy grew! Well, in some areas...

"Are you talking about me again?"

Carson had his 6-month checkup 3 weeks ago. And nothing like a trip to the Dr's office to make you feel like a bad mother. After arriving and being taken back to a room, the assistant promptly got to taking measurements, height and weight, and then came back with the stats print-out and announcement "The Doctor's going to want to talk to you, because his weight has dropped and everything else is lower too." Oh great...Just what I needed. I thought he was eating just fine. He was sleeping well at night (hooray?) and was just a generally happy baby overall. What could I have possibly done wrong to cause his weight to drop? 20 minutes later of wondering and waiting, the doc comes in and does his exam. Everything seems normal until we get to the issue of eating.

"I'm a happy boy 97% of the time!"

Long explanation short: He was previously getting about 24oz of milk per day (6, 4oz feedings), but based on his height and weight and where he needed to be, I should have been feeding him about 40oz per day (who knew, right? I mean, he never cried when he finished a bottle). Doc says his body is just barely functioning to keep his heart and organs working (just what a mom wants to hear, right? That she's basically starving her child unintentionally?) and that I needed to start feeding him every 3 hours around the clock and make sure he got at least 800 calories per day. Wow! I soon had a lot of work ahead of me for the next 2 weeks. And no more sleeping through the night from 7pm - 6am :(



Less than 2 weeks later, we hit success. Carson had put on nearly 2lbs in 10 days! So while he still isn't at the approximate 18lbs he should have been, we're still working on it. But it's better than having put on less than 1/2lb in 2 months. It's still a lot of work - having to feed him every 3 hours to keep up with the growth and make sure he's on track for our next visit. However, some of his skills have improved because of the weight gain. So Hooray to a healthy growing boy! (and yay to mommy for learning what not to have happen again)