#3's Terrors, Stuff We've Planted, and a Sleepover

Not sure what Mama was thinking, but I just scored an iPod mini. She was entered in some raffle at work and won...a Playstation. She made way to Best Buy and exited sans Playtation and con iPod.

A few years ago I was in the throes of music downloading mania. Originally this was to have a library of tunes for the regular spin classes I was holding up at Bluebonnet Bikes and in our garage. But a crashed hard drive took out not only my bidness, but also my library (I think it was around 1500 songs) of music that I'd handpicked.

I guess I'm still bummed. Probably because this was before DSL, or at least before I had it, so downloading music wasn't as quick as point and click.

But I've got the thing now. My library of CD's has made it back to the computer, but this was just a small bit of all the music I'd Napster'd. We'll see if I get back to that ripping music again. I think the going rate is a buck a song, so I'll have to be more selective.

Uncle Lonnie and Uncle Pickle have incredible music collections. They have something for every mood, party and situation. Me, I have a collection of The Racing Post cycling socks. Uncles win.

Just wish I was riding to use the iPod. Noah and I have been completely off the bike for more than two weeks now. My back has gotten to the point that I can't ride at all, even with Noah, and besides, he tweaked his knee practicing soccer, so we've been keeping ice on things. Or eating ice cream. One of the two.

Reanie has been riding, though. In fact, we're going to have to figure something out, because she's moving so fast and hard on the tricycle that she's usually only on two wheels. If she's on Budisimo's "bike," when she takes off she spins the front wheel while it struggles to get traction. Don't need no powermeter to know she's cranking out the watts there! Might be time to pull the little bike out of the barn...

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Noah had a buddy over to play and spend the night. They "swam" with the bouncy slide, and they were both very, very cool about letting Reanie and Budisimo play with them.

We had homemade pizzas and an apple pie thing that Mama concocted. So good that I ate three pieces of pizza past full and still went for it on dessert.

The boys played computer games well into the night. Though I was trying to sleep, it was neat to hear them really into it.

The plan was for them to sleep outside, but after tending to #3 at 4am, Mama saw that the boys were "camping" in the living room instead. I just got through checking on them, and as I look at the clock, I'm chuckling because the babies will be up soon, and those boys will be hard pressed to get back the sleep they missed by going to bed so late. 10 years old is fun, though.

But so is 35.

By the way, Happy Birthday, Lisa! (it was yesterday)


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Something is going on with Buddy at night. It has happened twice in the last four or five days. He wakes up in the middle of the night in a terror or extremely pissed off. He's screaming and hollering and running around in full sprint. He runs faster than he can see and plows into and through things. He can't stop moving and hollering/screaming. On one hand, it is the middle of the night, so Mama and I are doing what we can to make this a brief interuption, but on the other hand, he's darn near inconsolable. If it weren't the middle of the night and I hadn't just been startled awake, part of me would like to see what he's doing or trying to do in an effort to figure it out.

Tonight he "came to" in about 15 minutes. The other night it took 45 minutes or so. Since I'm such a light sleeper that I wake up when a cow takes a leak, I'm up for good once Buddy does this thing. Mama tries to help him though it awhile, then me, then Mama, then me again...and so forth. Meanwhile, whoever isn't with Buddy directly is having to soothe Reanie back to sleep. It is quite a production.

Not to discount what Buddy is feeling, but it is painful on our end to see him in such a state. Sure, he's not even two, but to see him struck so breaks your heart. You just want to hold him and hug it away, but holding him increases an already unbeliavable outburst (not the right word, but didn't feel like looking for it).

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-We planted some pumpkin seeds yesterday. It is about a month too late, though. They'll still grow, but the pumpkins won't look like much by halloween. Took me forever to find pumpkin seeds to plant. We'll have to save some from the pumpkins. But what will probably happen is that when it is time to plant next year, I'll be thinking either, "I meant to save seeds from last year," or, "Where did I put those seeds"...

-We've had a couple spaghetti squash from the garden in the last week. Better than what you can get at the store (of course), and strangely, bigger too.

-The tomato plants are about done. Next year I'll plant more of those. I didn't count on that the kids would pick and eat so much.

-Mama is about to make another batch of pesto as well as jalapeno jelly. Put your orders in now.

-The fig tree stopped producing for the year. Darn. I'm going to have to learn about the different kinds of figs and see if we can't get a June producer and something the will produce later in August.

-Noah's pear tree...last year it produced one pear. No big deal since we only planted it last year. This year, however, at one time there were 20 pears. But gradually they disappeared. It is normal to lose a few to bugs or whatever, but this was different. These weren't partially eaten or even on the ground. They would totally disappear. A pear isn't that small, so it isn't like a bug can take it away. Best we can figure is that someone has been picking them or that there is a bird that is strong enough to take the entire pear away.

As the tree went down to ten, then four pears (which weren't quite ready to pick), we became more attached to the remaining fruit. When we were down to one, I told Mama that it was for Noah to pick (he would be with us the next day). And wouldn't you know it, that ONE last pear was gone before Noah got here. Darn.

-I was about to pull out the eggplant yesterday. We got one good one off of it, but it hasn't done anything in a few weeks. On the day that I decided to pull it to make room for something else, sure enough, there's one brewing!

-The watermelon is about the size of a grocery store canteloupe, but it is ready anyway. We'll get into that today. I think we planted the watermelon too late, so I don't expect that we'll get anymore off of this plant.

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You read all of this?