Dirt and Other Things That Happen Too Fast

Half of the barren cotton field down the road is in my house again. Because of the lack of rain and the cotton failure, the fields are basically unanchored dirt piles. When a tractor is in a field, it kicks up so much dry dirt that a cloud forms and you cannot see the tractor. When I drive down the driveway, a huge dirt pouff obscures the view out my back window and I see a dirt devil every time I drive between Corinth West and Abilene. But getting back to the neighbor's field in my house. It is windy today so the dirt will be worse than ever. The kitchen seems to be collecting the most dirt. I kid you not when I say that I can clean the top of the microwave in the morning and will need to clean it again that evening. I think the dirt is coming in through the exhaust fan over the stove because the top of my stove was filthy. It's irritating to clean the house and by the end of the day it looks like a big dirt cloud coughed on it. It is also gross to do one wipe of a counter top with a new paper towel and have it resemble a towel that was used to clean the bottom of muddy shoes. And I am not talking dust, people, I am talking DIRT.  So there is my gripe today, as it is every day. (Tired of me bitching about it yet, Rick?) It is so disheartening to get the house spotless and have it get dirty with no help from people or pets.

Katie is feeling better and her cough has subsided. Her class has a subsitute teacher for the rest of the week because her regular teacher's husband had minor surgery. I don't know what it is, but Katie cannot remember names. It was two weeks before I finally figured out the name of her best friend from school. Up to that point, she just called her zebra girl. (The girl had worn a black and white striped dress the first day of school.) I learned her name when I read the snack calendar for Katie's class and when I got to zebra girl's real name, Katie shouted out, "That's my best friend!" But again I went off on a renegade tangent. Katie cannot remember her sub's name and probably will never know it. One thing that I have observed in Katie is that she is not a word master. She is a numbers master. Numbers, adding and subtracting came to her easier than the alphabet. She is also very good at figuring out how things work or solving physical problems. These indicators point to someone who will be good in math and science and not so much in language and grammar, which is not the norm for girls. But then again I could be totally wrong. That would be okay too.

Not too much to yak about. Cody loves his rawhide bone and only has one end left. I had to laugh the other night. When I retired to the bedroom, Cody was chewing his bone. Then in the middle of the night I woke up to the sound Cody's bone hitting the kitchen floor as he chewed on it. The dog was on a mission to eat that whole bone and he stayed up all night trying to succeed. It also reminded me of a junkie going on a bender.

Speaking of the kitchen floor. You know, the one that Cody ate. I have stripped the floor down to the wood subfloor. I have a few areas where I have to remove the linoleum's glued packing, but it has gone quickly. I picked out the tile I want a while back when Cody first ate the floor. (He has been eating the floor on and off since then.) I am excited about putting the new floor down. I don't understand it, but I like putting tile down whether it is on a floor, a tub surround or back splash.

I am now done with the highlights of the day. Pretty exciting here. I leave you with a picture from 2008. Katie is two years old. When I look at the picture, it makes me wish that I could have stopped time. Because children change so quickly, I feel as if I had but a fleeting moment of her as a newborn, a 1-year old, 2-year old, etc. In a few years I am sure I will be saying the same thing about her 5th year, 13th year, etc. It all goes by too quickly. After having Katie, I became much more aware of my own mortality. It's funny that a birth could make me accept that I will die some day. I am okay with that. Maybe because I know that Katie, with God's grace and mercy, will go on after I am gone. Ciao.

Dog Smarts and Frankie

Cody is one strange dog. When comparing him to an average dog, he is a little light in the brains department. However, today I had a revelation. Cody actually is smart, but in a non-dog way. For example, I bought him his first rawhide today. I was holding it and Cody proceeded to sniff it from top to bottom. I put it on the floor and he started barking at his bone. When I walked into the kitchen, he immediately started poking my hand with his nose. He wanted me to pick up the bone and put it in his mouth. Cody frequently pokes, flips or nuzzles my hands when he wants to be pet or if he wants me to hand something to him. And if I don't understand right away, he starts to grumble and get more aggressive. He obviously understands that my hands can get something that he wants. That is kind of a weird concept for a dog to understand. In some ways Cody reminds me of Max, our White German Shepherd, (may he rest in peace). Here's what I mean. When I would get home from work, Max and Eric would meet me at the door and then Max would start poking and pushing me in the butt with his nose to steer me to the back door. He wanted to go out. Eric, on the other hand, would sit by the door, which is what dogs typically do when they want to go out. Anyway, Cody is intelligent but it took me awhile to pick up on it. (Now who's the dumb one?!)

Katie stayed home from school today because of her cough, so that means the house is a disaster. She wanted to do a dress rehearsal for Halloween. As I mentioned before she wants to be Frankie Stein, who has light green skin, so today I painted Katie's face green and did up her eyes and eyebrows. What do you think?

The panty hose came with the costume. It is supposed to look like she is stitched together.

A slightly disgusted Frankie Stein

Trying to look scary.

There She Blows

Today, the school nurse called to tell me that Katie threw up in the cafeteria after breakfast. Anson ISD has a rule that the child that goes home sick cannot return to school until 24, medicine-free hours have passed without any more puking. I picked her up from school at 8:45 am and technically she could go back to school tomorrow at 8:45 am because she only threw up that once, but now she has developed a nasty cough. Today was picture day at school and I am slightly bummed. I hope that the photographer will do a second appearance at the school to shoot anyone that missed school on Monday. If not, Rick wants to contact the photographer and see if the photographer can still take pictures of Katie if we bring her to him. We'll see. I was thinking of getting one of those picture frames that has a spot for each year's school picture. I'll hold off until I hear from the school about an alternate option. I don't want to start the collage off with a missing picture.(Sorry about the gross title of this post. I have been wanting to use that if I blogged about anyone throwing up. Yes, see what I think about in my spare time?!)

Blue-Haired, One-Legged Rapunzel

Katie wants to be Frankie Stein, for Halloween. (See left.) For those unfamiliar, Frankie Stein, the daughter of Frankenstein,  is a doll from Mattel's Monster High series. Some of the other dolls are Draculara, Claudine Wolf and Cleo de Nile. Anyway, last week we found the costume at Wal-Mart, but we could not find the wig or the shoes. The shoes I can create myself by using white medical tape on Katie's black patent shoes. However, the wig is another story. I ordered the wig online, but they are on back order. I hope to have it by October 10. As a back up, Katie picked out a blue wig at Wal-Mart. Yesterday Katie decided she wanted to be the Blue-Haired Rapunzel and I obliged and took pictures for Rick. ("Guess what? He is out of town on a business trip! Shocking!" Brenda said with a sarcastic tone.)

 A blue-haired, one-legged Rapunzel doing ballet.

 "I am ready for my close up, Mr. De Mille."

Bonus:  What movie is that from?

Pooped and dizzy from spinning in circles.

Rick--Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am off to bed. I just wanted to do a post for you because I know how much you look forward to them when you are on the road.

Note To Self: Remove time stamp from blogger posts.

Re-Experiencing

Here is a post I have been putting off writing.

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The question of the day was, "Where were you on 9/11?" My shortened answer is that at the time I worked for large, travel management company. Because of the industry that I worked in, 9/11 shook my company, my job and my world.

Throughout the morning hours, we were gathered in the boardroom watching the TV trying to get the facts. Typical for an emergency situation as 9/11, there was a lot of bad information offered by the news media that morning. The uncertainty was frightening. "What's next?" was a question on everyone's mind. It was not until 12:15 pm when all of the aircraft were on the ground and accounted for did the enormity of the situation hit. I was the head person for one of the GDSs that we had in the company. (We had two.) I had the foreboding job of batching all of the PNRs (reservations) that had travel segments on 9/11. I then had to go through all of the PNRs. A PNR would come up, I'd scan the passenger name then flight numbers and destinations. If the flyer was not on one of those flights I sent the PNR to a queue for holding. There was a second delay when I would file one PNR and the next one would come up on the screen. During that time I would cast my eyes downward and close them. I would slowly open my eyes and silently say, "Please, please, please no." while my stomach plummeted. I also discovered later that I had my jaw clenched because of the pain shortly after I finished.

We did not lose any clients on that day. We did have clients clients scattered around the country. Because our airspace was shut down, the international flights from Europe got diverted to Canada. We had quite a few clients living in Canada for a few days.

About a week prior to this 10th anniversary, the 9/11 programs starting showing up on TV and despite having lived through nine other anniversaries, this year I experienced the same emotions as I did in 2001. As I said on Facebook, it is very important to remember, but somehow I got slipped into re-experiencing that day. One sight that I cannot look at is the images of people falling to their deaths from the WTC's higher floors. I am not alone. Most people find the videos and still shots extremely emotional. Some of the free falling people may have committed  suicide, but popular thought is that most of those people exited because of the intense heat, smoke and flames. By instinct people would try to get away from those conditions and to the fresh air. Did they weigh the pros and cons? Probably not. They just reacted. For that reason I have a hard time saying "chose to jump". It sounds like a conscious decision; like "I'm gonna jump now." when it most likely was, "I need to breathe. I need to get away from the heat, flames and smoke." However, we will never know. And if we did, it would not make it less heartbreaking. I read that the estimated number of people who fell to their death is 200. Even more tragic is that the speed in which the people fell is estimated at 150 mph. At that speed, you do not lose consciousness but death is instantaneous upon impact so you can imagine the condition of the bodies on the ground. The images of people descending out of the WTC are the only images we have of people that were killed that horrible day. Perhaps that is why it stirs just deep, painful responses in people. Or as one blogger wrote that in the western world we don't come upon horrid death every day, so the terrorist attacks were difficult for us to process but then add the images of people coming out of the WTC's windows and we cannot even think about it without extreme emotional repercussions. All those atrocities in one day. Well, time to move on from this subject. I have managed to drag myself down again and I think I took you with me.

WTFR . . . oh, and our anniversary

Last Saturday we went to the West Texas Fair and Rodeo. Because it was the first weekend for the fair, the lines at the rides were ridiculously long. I kid you not. It took an hour to go on the ferris wheel. We had shorter waits at Disney! The rides at the WTFR are your typical carnival fair types. Rick and Katie did a few rides, but I opted to stand aside this year. If you recall, last year I forgot that I had developed inner ear issues and I accompanied Katie on the Tilt-A-Whirl. After the ride Rick had to escort me to the fence and I had to hang on to his arm for the rest of the night. Anyway, we had a good family night and it was a different way to spend one's anniversary. We have now been married six years.

I learned a new thing about Cody. The light in the range hood burnt out, so he had no night light. And boy did he boo-hoo about that. I finally had to turn on another light to calm his little frazzled nerves. I also learned that Cody does not like thunder. It is actually thundering right now and he is beside himself. I need to go and sit with him, but before I do here are the pictures from our anniversary at the fair. Unfortunately, there are none with Rick and I together to commemorate the day.

 Katie and Rick on the #9 ferris wheel car. Me on the ground.

 Ferris wheel

Waiting in another line.

Katie coming down the super slide.

And she made it!

Skills

Yesterday Katie brought home her Kindergarten Basic Skills Checklist that was administered last week. So basically, Rick and I received our report card on how successful our at-home teaching has been.

1.  She recognizes her name and she can spell her name. However, she wrote her name in all capital letters because that is how I taught her. (Bad mama.) Matter of fact, I tend to write everything that way.

2.  She knows all required eight colors.

3. She can count to 39, but skipped 15 twice so they wrote she can only count to 14.

4. She recognizes all the numbers from 0-10.

5. She knows all of her shapes except square and rectangle. That's typically Katie. She can point out the octagon but not the square. The more complex the easier it is for her to see and remember.

6. She knows all of her letters except upper case V, lower case v and lower case d. She knows what sounds the letters make of only half the alphabet. I was surprised with the ones she missed because I know Rick worked on them with her.

7. She knows her birthday.

Overall I think she did pretty good. She can read about four pages of The Cat In The Hat thanks to Rick. Actually, I need to give credit where credit is due. Katie knows the sounds of half the alphabet because of Rick.

We need to work at home with Katie. Matter of fact, the teachers expect us to work at home with her, so I guess you could say that WE, Rick and I, have homework. A parent had warned me about this. The school tests and gives concepts. It is up to the parents to teach and reinforce those concepts at home. My thought is that if I am going to be teaching Katie at home, I want 1/2 the teacher's salary. No disrespect to teachers. I know they do not get paid what they are worth and they are pushed to teach to test because those test scores decide the fate of the teacher and the school, but I don't recall it being that way when I was in school. You know, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Anyway, I am pretty sure this is how all grades will go. Never thought I would be returning to kindergarten through 12th grade again.

President Lincoln Would Be So Disappointed

Rick has been traveling to Springfield, IL for the last couple of weeks. All though Springfield is the capitol of Illinois, it is not a major city and its claim to fame is that President Lincoln lived there for a number of years. Mr. Lincoln is also buried there and not in Arlington like many people assume. Now on to my story about Rick's adventures in Honest Abe's town.

Last night at about 11 pm, I was on the phone with Rick. All of sudden, Rick cuts off in mid-sentence and I hear voices in the background. I patiently wait and when he comes back on the line he said that the front desk made an error. They had keyed a new card for another person and it was for his room. A maid was with the lost guy and she radioed down to the lobby. The guy asked Rick if he was related to Doug Kirschner, which we are not. When Rick asked him if his last name was Kirschner, the guy said it was not. The maid and the guy trekked back down to the lobby. Rick tried calling the front desk, but he didn't get a response at first. He finally got through and found out what happened. A guy came into the hotel with his backpack. The employee that works nights at the front desk had just come on his shift and the gentleman who knows my husband was in the back room. Backpack guy told the night desk clerk he was Kirschner and needed a key to his room. The desk clerk programmed a new key and handed it to the guy. When backpack guy showed up to the room with the maid, Rick had the security latch on the door and that is what prevented them from entering the room. The maid took backpack guy down to the lobby. The front desk said they were calling the police. Backpack guy got cocky and said, "Go ahead call the police." However, shortly after that he ran out the front door. He obviously was up to no good.

So how did the guy know my husband's name and room number? Chances are the guy has been watching Rick go in and out of the hotel. He may have heard the front desk say, "Good morning Mr. Kirschner or something to that effect. He might have followed my husband to his room so he knew what room Rick was staying in or the maid was in on it. Why would he try to enter a room when chances are that the occupant would be there? Well, it was 11 pm and he probably assumed the guest would be asleep. During the day there are too many maids in the hallways because they are cleaning rooms. He most likely had a knife or gun in his backpack and planned on burglarizing the room and my husband. He looked a little on the homeless side, but I don't think he was looking for a place to crash. Why did he pick Rick? Well, Rick dresses pretty sharp when he is visiting client sites (this time it is the State of Illinois DOC) designer suits, shiny shoes, gold jewelery and a packed computer case.

The night clerk at the front desk apologized profusely to my husband. Rick thinks the guy is fearful that he is going to lose his job. Rick doesn't want that to happen because no one got hurt. I understand if the guy does though because he had never seen my husband and he should have asked for photo I.D. before filling the request.

Now if this story doesn't convince you always flip the security latch on your hotel room door I don't know what will get that point across. Also, just because the hotel is up-scale and the nicest one a city, don't assume that you are safe. Hotels do have security people, but do they check everyone that walks in and out of the hotel? Do they even pay attention to who walks in the front door or does that job fall to the very busy front desk? Do you have to show a room key to get on the elevator or take the stairs? Does the front desk protect your identity or access to your room? In this case, all of the hotel's security measures failed and it was my husbands security measure that saved his butt. Moral of the story: Don't put your safety in anyone else's hands. They don't care as much about you as you do.

To cheer Rick up--at least I hope it does--Here is a family picture from our vacation. We are standing in front of Mickey's gigantic Fantasia hat in Disney Hollywood Studios. Katie and I look worse for wear, but Rick looks pretty fresh.