Monkey Wrench

WACKY WEDNESDAY: Today didn't go entirely as planned. Our Wednesday train started derailing last night, around 10 p.m., when CJ & Bee's biggest brother Rick called. He had just returned home from a distastrous jog where he went down hard, injuring a big toe. I went over to his place for a looksee last night. It didn't look good.

This morning, Bee had a special 90 minute dance camp/ballet class/ Today's theme was "fiesta." The takeaway 'prize' from it - a feathered mask. (To me, that's more Mardigras than Spanish-inspired, but oh well, she loved it.)

Once dance was done, our next stop was a place decidedly less fun: The urgent clinic at Group Health, so that Rick could get his injury checked out. We dropped him at the clinic and then moseyed over to Safeway to get a couple of corn dogs for the kids. They ate them in a lovely courtyard we found at Group Health. There were sculptures, a fountain, nice landscaping and some benches.

There were also some interesting decorative architectural elementents highlighted by brick surrounds. We found a plaque that let us know that the decorative elements were made from terra cotta and preserved from an apartment building built in 1926 which formerly stood on the present day Group Health site. That prompted a conversation about terra cotta (where it comes from, what it is, how it's used).

Corn dogs consumed, we headed back into urgent care to find Rick still sitting there. We left him again, heading for the awesome slide on the Group Health grounds. The kids must have gone down that slide 50 times today. It's really quite high, unlike slides you'll find in the average play park, that's for sure. For one thing, the steps leading up to it are darn near vertical, more like ladder rungs, really. Of course our kids have grown up amidst remodeling, and climbing ladders is second nature to them.

After the slide session, we went back to check on Rick. Good news is, he was gone from the waiting room. The bad news is, he was nowhere to be seen/heard. So off we went again.

We headed for the lab, where I had to donate a small vial of blood. The kids got to see the blood draw, which I think is a good thing. Neither one of them has had to have a blood draw ever/yet, and so seeing it done up-close and seeing that it didn't hurt or freak me out is a positive thing, I'd think.

After we were done there, there was still no sign of Rick. Given that, I reminded the kids that there was a cool toy store down the street. One that had M&Ms in every color of the rainbow, and then some. ...

Needless to say, that got their attention. So we headed to Red Balloon Company.

I told the kids they could pick a couple of colors each. Annabelle opted for light pink, dark pink and gold. CJ went with silver and gold.

We walked back to Group Health. Still no sign of Rick, so we went back to a park bench by a slide. I told the kids they could each have 20 M&Ms. If they wanted their colors to disappear at the same rate, that would mean they'd need to eat an equal number of each color.

The math for CJ's was easy - 10 gold, 10 silver. Annabelle's tri-colored bag presented a bit more of a problem. She couldn't have 10 apiece, that would be 30. Too much! We did the math for 9 apiece (too much!), 8 apiece (too much!) and finally 7. We decided that 21 is close enough to 20.

We took another little walk, this time around the residential area behind Group Health. We saw some interesting architecture.

Finally, about three hours after we arrived, Rick was finished. The verdict is a broken big toe. The cure is four weeks on crutches. BIG bummer.

DEAR DIARY: Building on our reading of yesterday (Diary of a Worm, Diary of a Spider and Diary of a Fly), this morning I asked the kids to choose a critter and write a diary entry from its perspective.

Annabelle wrote

Diary of a Dolphin
Wednesday, August 18
I love being a maml. I am going to play with a beach ball later. Wale is my
freind.


CJ wrote

Diary of a Dog
Wednesday, August 18
I did not eat a bone yet.
I want food.

THE EYES HAVE IT: This morning, watching cartoons, CJ wondered why one of the characters "looks like he's asleep" but clearly he wasn't - the character was talking and interacting with others. The character he spoke of had little more than black slits as eyes.

Without me saying anything yet, CJ noted that he's seen other characters similarly animated. "They were from China," he observed. "Why do they do that?" he asked of cartoonists' drawing Asian characters' eyes like that. "They look like they're asleep."

Good question, CJ. I told him that people of Asian ethnicity often do have eyes that are a little less round or almond or oval shaped than non-Asians. "But their eyes are NOT slits," I was sure to stress. "Honestly, I think it's just lazy cartoonists. They aren't taking the time to properly draw their eyes."