the thing

Maple's birthday was last Thursday. Her grandma and pa were here and we all went out for Ethiopian food, which was Maple's idea. She got some amazing gifts (from people who obviously read this blog) and we've been dancing with silk scarves and coloring and painting ever since her big day. Her friend Lachelle sent some of those photo-like sun papers, where you lay something on the paper and leave it in the sun for a few minutes and then get a photo-like print. Maple has been dying to use them but we haven't yet. It's cloudy today, and if she asks me about "doing those sun things" once more I am shipping her off to California, where I'm sure Lachelle will be happy to "do the sun things" with her.

Maple's friend Hillary got her a wooden knitting fork, which is a really cool contraption that creates long i-cord like knitting. Maple loves it. It's the first thing I've ever seen her play with for longer than four minutes. Amazing! And she got a very nice pair of Uggs from her friend Trish, which prompted a long conversation about dead sheep and birthday etiquette. Amazingly this conversation was started by Maple and not by the maternal vegan police. (She's keeping the boots, but saying thank you to the sheep whenever she wears them.)

On Sunday night, Maple went on her first overnight trip without us. She went to visit Great-Grandma Libby with Grandma and Pa. It was sort of shocking to have a whole day and night away from her. But we survived -- in fact, it was lovely, and she had a blast.

Sean is almost done with his writing thing, and I don't want to say more about it except that I've read it and was really touched by it (I laughed, I cried, it was way better than Cats) and he's sending it off tomorrow. We will have more to say about that in December sometime. It's fucking great. Can't believe I found AND MARRIED such a monster talent.

I think I've recovered from my fatigue (I had a few weeks of feeling tired all the time, which is not uncommon for MS patients -- I love thinking of myself as a patient by the way). The secret for me was to get on a regular (5x/week) regimen of jogging. I have jogged sporadically my whole life, but either because I'm getting older or because I have MS, I now know that I need to be pretty regular about it. So I jog for two or three miles, five times a week, and that seems to keep me "normal." I'm not going to try to get faster or run longer -- if I start jogging more distance or more often, I feel awful when I invariably go back to less jogging.

I took the day off today so I could read Sean's thing and copy edit it, and now Maple is taking a nap and Sean is finishing up his edits. The blueberry brownies are out of the oven and smelling up the joint nicely, and now I need to go for my token jog. Tonight's dinner will be creamed patty pan squash and brownies, and probably something else, like kale, rice, or tofu. But squash and brownies would be fine by themselves. In the summer we just buy what's fresh from the farmer's market and enjoy the lazy meals that result.