Newark 3am

After I have walked concourse C failing to find a coffeeshop, Josh tells me that Dunkin Donuts is the Starbucks of the east coast.   Urbanspoon says there is a  Starbucks here but my up-all-night eyes cannot see it.  

The kids are asleep.  

There were drifts of dirty snow along the railroad tacks and the wide glass windows are radiating cold.  Frost brought no coat so Josh is in a t-shirt  while fist has the sounders jersey.  Frost said he thought it was going to be hot. 

We are going to wake the kids shortly to get a bite to eat before boarding.  

Heritage Kitchen

For lunch, I ate coconut grouper at the Heritage Kitchen beach shack which sells local reef fish caribbean style. I had been waiting to visit for a few days but they are only open Wednesday through Sunday and close early (6pm) on Sunday so I had missed a few opportunities. After serving my fish and Wren's soda, the chef and her friends sat at another table under the coconut fronded shelter and played a card game while smoking cigarettes. The rain washed over the sea and gave it a smoothed out appearance. In the distance, beyond the lee of the houses and palms on the shore - the water was rippled by wind but we were perfectly protected.

Nosology with a Wolf

Today I visited a doctor of noses and related orifices.  His name is Dr Wolf.  His nursing assistant did my intake, giving me a scratch-and-sniff test to see how acute my smelling was.

The only scent I could smell was mint.

"I can't really smell any of these" I explained to her after scratch-sniffing the little brown patches on the card.   She said I had to guess to score the test.  There was no "don't know" option.  I said that was wrong because then I had a 25% chance of getting one of the listed smells right while the truth was I didn't know at all.

She said "I can smell it from here!"

I had been listening to an NPR program about power poses.  Apparently dominant animals of all species assume open, wide stances which communicate dominance to others as well as to the self. The nurse was in a power pose at her terminal - legs akimbo, shoulders back - so she was used to obedience.  I tried not to cross my legs like a victim but did, involuntarily.  It was partly because I had just washed my hair and left it wet which is an unusual thing to do in winter and made me feel socially awkward.  I felt that everyone was thinking about my hair so I guessed what they smelt like.

I scored 1/3.  I really did smell mint so I was okay with that.

After that the Wolf doctor came in.  He was wearing a Sounders lanyard and looked happy.  Even as a doctor he was very nice, witty, informative and (I hope) thorough.  He spritzed my nose with two unpleasant liquid drugs (novocaine and something else to dilate my nostrils) and then stuck a long thin tube with a light on up my nose.  This told him that I have no nasal polyps or inflammation in the nasal passages.

The nose squirters

 He asked if I had had major head trauma or surgery, which I have not.

His conclusion was that I have either post-viral or idiopathic anosmia.  Idiopathic is a good word for "we don't know".  It means "arising spontaneously or from an obscure or unknown cause".  Its origin is actually the Greek words for one's self (idio) and suffering (pathos).  From Wikipedia I learned that the term comes from nosology.   "Nosology!" I thought.  However, nosology has nothing to do with noses... but is the science of classification of diseases.  So, my disease is either post-viral or unique not-yet-understood type of suffering.

The Nose Doctor has referred me for a brain MRI.  I asked him if it was likely that I had a brain tumor.  He said it was not, however in cases of "a disease of one's own kind" anosmia, it is standard protocol to look for a tumor in the part of the cortex where the olfactory nerve enters the brain, or connects to it.  I don't recall the exact mechanism but he showed me a picture and pointed at some nerves.  Here is a picture in case you are diligent about understanding all this.

Parts of the nose (not the one showing the olfactory nerves)

The reason's that I am unlikely to have a brain tumor are:

1. This has been going on a long time;
2. I am not having headaches
3. I don't have blurred vision
4. I am not falling over
5. or Having personality changes (although, he pointed out that I am unlikely to have noticed if I am, and so I am asking YOU, if I am much altered).
6. In his entire career of referring anosmiacs for MRI's he has never found one.

The reason that I might is:

1. I cannot smell anything even though my nose-part receptors look fine so perhaps something is wrong with my brain-part receivers.

I am not able to get an MRI soon because our health insurance is not officially through yet and so the Imaging department won't schedule an expensive procedure like this until they have authorization.  I have given them the COBRA contacts in hope of achieving this but it may have to wait till we return from holiday.

Meanwhile, I was warned to pay attention for smoke and gas leaks.

Mysteries

Today we have faced two mysteries and solved one of them.

Where are the plankton?
The first relates to our plan to sample plankton.  Frost is going to be missing a week of school for our upcoming trip.  Public Schools do not like children to go missing even for tropical island vacations (or perhaps, especially so).  They send you information about how even planned absences by middle-class kids are correlated with lower high-school graduation rates and worse test scores.  Plus, it stresses the teachers.  So, in order to qualify as an excused absence rather than being truant (the really bad kind of absent) they require you to fill out a form to show how you will make the trip EDUCATIONAL.

To answer this question I made up a project to compare zooplankton in a few samples of Puget Sound and Grand Cayman water.  I gave Frost a notebook and explained it to him.

Being a more experience truant than I and also more teenage, he said "Mum, you realize we don't have to  do this.  I can just say "I am going to educate myself by looking at tropical fish or something."

Ignoring objections, today Frost and I sat down to make some fractional mesh sieves to strain water for plankton of  various sizes.  We had been given the nitex mesh by a friend who is a marine biologist.  I followed instructions online and Josh sawed our PVC pipe into the correct lengths.  Frost glued the nitex on with silicone adhesive and they looked great.

The 100 micron sieve.  It has a line on it because our first outline was wrong. 

We drove down to Golden Gardens and I gave Frost some water shoes and told him to wade into the water and full a bucket.

"You never said I had to go in the water.  Its freezing.  You go to be kidding" was his reaction.  To be honest everyone else on the beach was wearing ski jackets and mufflers and clustering around smoky fires.  A few people were running around the beach wearing bicycle helmets with balaclavas under them.  Frost rolled up his pants and waded in the sea.  Wren cried about the wind and the water and the blinding sunshine and the fact that it was taking away his screen time but we persisted.

Frost wading in winter

We strained a few buckets through the fractional sieves and there was a lot of 'fine stuff' in the sieves.  So we took the water and the stuff home.  However, when we looked at our sample under 100X 200X and 400X - there was no plankton just fragments of leaves: tiny, tiny leaves.

200x seaweed fragment from Golden Gardens

We found a few odd things - a leg about 100 microns long that looked like a spider-leg - some small drifting rice-grain yellow things but nothing that looked like plankton.  So, we wonder if we have to strain more water to get enough plankton to see.  We wonder if the plankton is deeper down or further out.   Frost is learning that science is not about finding things out as much as finding more mysteries.

What was the crunching in the night?
Last night, at 3.45am, we were woken by Beezle barking a lot.  He stood up in bed and barked "warning, warning".  I fumbled for the light switch and failed to find it.  Josh tumbled out of bed to fight (or at least face) the source of the noise.

He padded around the house for a bit and then came back to bed saying it was nothing.  But I couldn't sleep again.  I got up and checked all the doors, checked Frost, checked the computers.  Everything was quiet.  Eventually, I slept again but all day we were puzzling about the noise - a repetitive crunching sound that made Josh think of a cat scratching something near his ear and me, of someone dragging their fingers back and forth on an old corrugated washing-board.

The mystery was solved at bedtime when I went to run a bath and found a large bag of Tostitos in it.  Frost said he had been eating them in the bath while hiding from Wren and a friend on a playdate.  Now, our cat 'Kitty Haiku' likes to drink water from the bath.  We have deduced that, in the dark of night, she jumped into the bath and landed ON THE BAG OF TOSTITOS (a jumbo Costco bag).  She was freaked out and tried to jump out, thrashing around on the giant bag of Tostitos.  Beezle started barking and she fled.

This explains the noise and calms me, somewhat.

I am not inserting a reenactment although it would be entertaining.  Josh is eating the thrashed-upon Tostitos as I type.

The Best Recipe Ever (if you are a South African Emigrant Nostalgic baker)

Imagine you emigrated from the USA and ended up in some up-country South African town where people eat boere-wors and Nescafe Instant coffee.  Now you have children.  Instead of the cultured Starbukkers of your youth, they like Milo and anchovy paste on toast.  Your friends let them sip wine and shandies at braais.  What can you do?  Nothing, of course.  But to make yourself feel better you bake choc-chip-cookies and force-feed them pepperoni pizza for parties - imported pepperoni of course.

Well, my expat attempt to emphasize my children's colonial roots is The Crunchy.  If you fly SAA to South Africa, odds are you will get a crunchy with your tea or coffee.  They are served at parties, kept in the cookie tin, sent in lunch boxes and shared (chocolate coated) at Christmas.

Crunchies are the South African choc-chip cookie and now you too can enjoy them!

Here is a great recipe. from Orna Bakes website.  If the link is broken, ask me... I have a copy of a few versions.

I am waiting for my second batch to come out of the oven.  They take a while to harden and the kids keep coming to check "Are they ready yet?  Are they cool?"  Of course, I can't smell anything even this close but they sure look good.

Another good recipe is my aunt's recipe for klapperys (coconut ice).  You American's have no idea what I am talking about... you probably think its some kind of dairy-free desert or a coconut smoothie.  It is not!  It is about 50/50 desiccated coconut and sugar.  I shall post hers later (photostream glitch) but for now you have the web version.

Meanwhile
Wren and I went for a walk together to return books to the Free Little Library.  All around our neighborhood there are little outdoor book boxes where you can take or drop books.  I often read books from them - an odd and seldom curated mix - including When Bears Attack, fantasy novels, romance, scandinavian detective novels and whatnot.

On the way home Wren confided that his friend Piper had told him that her cat puked its intestines out and is now dead.  Did I think that was gross?  I said I thought it was gross.

This is why you must take your kids on walks - to find wild books and learn about gross secrets they have been keeping.

The Blog is Back

Apparently Facebook is not nice for everyone and family, near and far, have been missing out in a big way.  They didn't know that Wren turned 7, they didn't hear about the snow, they didn't know how cute the kids are or that I have lost my sense of smell ... SO... we are going to go back to blogland.

Hello World.

In which we do not get the dinner we planned
The first news to report is that we did not go to the new Seattle Din Tai Fung for dinner because the wait for a table was 1 hour and 45 minutes at 6pm.  Apparently, this is not a family-friendly place to eat as you cannot make a reservation and you cannot put your name on a list until you are standing outside.  Its like that Whale Wins place that is so popular that I have never eaten there.

Because I really care about dumplings, next week, I shall go and take my laptop and put our name on a list and then Josh will join me with the kids for dinner.

Because we were all geared to eat out, we went to Bengal Tiger instead.  Wren whispered "don't tell them but the thing I don't like about this food is that it is all spicy".  He drank two glasses of water and a mango lassi as well as lots of tandoori chicken, vegetable samosa and rice.  Then he was full up.

Frost ate dal.

Josh and I ate as much as we could of the remaining dishes but we have enough for dinner tomorrow in the leftover box.

We all ate sugar coated aniseed on the way out.  I could only taste the sugar since aniseed is mainly a smell.  Today, I also noticed I could not smell cologne, dog poop, Frost, Beezles sour ears or chocolate.

The ENT
On Tuesday I am going to see an ENT.  I went to see the regular doctor this week to follow-up on my anosmia (there, a scrabble word for you).  Last time I had seen her I had impressed her with my profound smell loss by being unable to smell anything in a bottle of dried porcini.

She prescribed 3 months of B12 in case it was due to a deficiency but I have had no improvement and asked to be referred to an ENT.

She called the ENT while I was there.  He said that the most common cause of loss of smell was a viral infection (a cold) or chronic sinus infection.  I cannot recall a particular cold causing this but it has been a long while.  He also suggested I try zinc 'in case'.

I will report back after the appointment.

Cayman Islands... Soon
I have put a laundry basket out in the bedroom and am throwing things in it for our trip to the Cayman Islands.  Today I threw in a $2.99 snorkel and mask which I bought at Goodwill and a $40 pair of fins and mask which I bought on the Sports Authority Sale.  Apparently most people are buying snowboards and skis despite the snow drought.  I have also put a hold on a book at the library titled Birds of the Cayman Islands.  There are many new birds, parrots and a strange kind of forest called Dry Royal Palm Forest in which huge palms poke out of dry deciduous forest.    You can see them in the book preview on Amazon.  I have also ordered a plankton net with 300 micron mesh for the kids to capture larger zooplankton for our microscopic research project.

My Cayman Island To Do List now looks like this.  Of course, this is very tentative and there may be more or less lying around.

Saturday:  Arrive
Sunday:  Explore locally and lie around.  Hunt plankton.
Monday:  Stingray City & Snorkel tour (weather permitting, because there is only one cruise ship in town that day)
Tuesday: Turtle farm and water park.
Wednesday:  Lie around.
Thursday:  Botanic Gardens Iguanas and hike Mastic Trail to find parrots.  Swim NE beach.
Friday:  Lie around & snorkel a new beach
Saturday: Move to hotel and lie around pool.
Sunday: ditto.

That's enough for now.
Bye
Shannon

Adventures in Microscopy

Today, I hooked up the new OMAX Microscope and downloaded the software to record pictures and transfer them to the computer.  Then, I went out and collected a sample of water from our bird bath.

This is what was in it!

Bdelloid Rotifer  90 microns.  100X

It was swimming around, waving its littel cillia around the mouth, sucking  in tiny dots of things.  I read that this animal is a kind of phytoplankton.

It was in my bird bath!

There were a couple of them.  We watched them swimmig, attaching and eating for a while before returning them to the birdbath!

Incredible fun for all.

Wren tastes his first truffle

Wren has been obsessed with truffles for a while.  He has asked for truffles for his birthday, has begged to "go and find truffles" and has asked "when will we GET truffles".  He had not eaten one, his interest was based purely on a child's fascination with things rare, special, expensive, denied.

I told him I could not find truffles because I did not have a truffle dog or pig and that they were too expensive.  This only increased the desire to Have Truffles.

"I know I will like them!" Wren told his friend and his father, "even though I have never had one.  I love all mushrooms!"  "How do you KNOW you'll like them?" asked his hot-dog-and-rice loving friend.  "I WILL" said Wren.

Today, I wanted to lure the kids out of the house to a Farmers' Market and noticed that Foraged and Found  said they have local Black Truffles in stock in November.  I promised Wren that we could get a few truffles at the market.

"How many can I get?" asked Wren.  "Will it be $100?  I want to buy a BOX."
"It will depend on how much they cost..." I explained.  You can definitely get two.

It turned out that local black truffles (which are typically not as intense as the white or european) were $12 an ounce.  We bought 6 for $20.  Wren asked how to eat them and the vendor explained that we should rinse the dusting of earth from the surface and then grate a few finely over fresh cooked pasta with oil/butter.  He suggested a zester.

All the way around the marked Wren was smelling in his bag saying he could smell them.  That they smelled "like mushrooms".  Frost and I could smell nothing.  Frost said "It smells like paper bag".

When we got home Josh became impatient with Wren because he kept saying "TRUFFLE TRUFFLE TRUFFLE".  Its a good word but quickly gets overused.  I decided Wren did not have to wait for dinner since the trufflepation was killing us so I zested a small piece of cleaned truffle onto a dab of butter and let Wren eat it.

Then he wanted a sliver of raw truffle.  We tried that too.

"I knew I would like it."  He announced.  "It tastes delicious, just like FUNGUS"

Honestly, I can't taste anything much - either they were not fully mature and pungent or its my nose challenge.  I shall cook it properly later with some pasta.

At least Wren is satisfied.

Confessions of an Omnivorous Vegetarian

Thesedays, most families have some food issues.  Someone has an allergy, a preference, only eats potatoes, only eats veggie burgers, is gluten-intolerant or overweight, is underweight and that's not even going into the question of the provenance and eco-ethics of your food choices.  This is the cast of my family drama:

Shannon (aka Mom) - professed vegetarian, actually opportunistic omnivore.
Josh (aka Dad) - professed "low consumer", actually opportunistic Jack-in-a-Boxer and Googleater.
Frost - vegetarian, actually pretty much vegan
Wren - "I eat meat and vegetarians".

"This looks delicious!"

I have only been a true vegan for about two years in my twenties.  I didn't have much money and near the end of that period - waitressing for a kosher Jewish wedding caterer - I would shove potato piroshki's and herring in my mouth with one hand as I walked through the tunnel from the commercial kitchen to the function rooms.  I felt that food that 'fell off the wagon' so to speak, was not my contribution to the political nexus of meat production and since there was nothing edible in the fridge at home I would probably have eaten dumpster meat too, if somebody suggested it.  After that, I was vegetarian for about 6 years.  Really - and I recall developing some meat aversion during that time.

Even so, my share house was very ETHICAL.  These were animal liberationists who would go off in the night to 'free' pigs but who still kept meat in the fridge for 5 or 6 refugee cats because cats were by nature carnivorous.

That's how I feel about Wren.  He is clearly a carnivore in sheep's clothing.  Sweet and sensitive, with a porcine aortic valve, you would think his heart would reach out and refuse to eat animals but he is quite emphatic that he likes to eat meat and he will eat it even if I call it COW and PIG and CHICKEN.  Since he was 4 and ate all of Grandad's bouillabaisse - cracking crab legs and pulling clams out of the shell, asking "is this the foot?" before eating it - I have realized that he can't help it. So this is how it goes in our house:

This morning, Wren (6) was watching Yogscast but instead of a minecraft video he was watching a cooking show.  He told me it was "cooking with Duncan" and he had watched it a few times.  He says he was learning how to cook a steak and he would like to do it because it looked delicious.  I agreed it would be interesting.  I cannot recall when we last cooked a steak.

So off we went to Whole Foods and bought the best (aka expensive) grass-fed, level 4 cruelty free (aka the only bad thing in your life was being killed for me to eat) level cow.  The man behind the counter told us it was the best steak so Wren chose that one.  I supported him because I am of the brand of guilty vegetarian omnivore that believes that paying a lot for dairy, meat and related products is a penance as well as increasing the odds of better standard of living for the livestock.

We also bought the ingredients from the Youtube video:  "I need PORT" said Wren as we wandered through Whole Foods... "and salad!"  "Do you have brandy?  And "we need SINGLE cream not whipping cream."  We had a long debate over the color of the sweet potatoes.  The English variety on the video were yellow on the outside but orange inside.  Here in the USA we have only red and white varieties.

We came home and started preparing.  In the excitement of cooking from Yogscast, even Frost (the vegetarian) got involved.  In the midst of the steak smoking, the conversion of Centigrade to Fahrenheit for the oven 'chips' and the drama over how to saute the onions Frost said "don't worry about heating my veggie soup, this is a bit stressful and I don't want your steak to burn."

Wren peels the potato

Wren checks the Youtube Video for what to do with the ends of the potato

Wren watches the steak sear and worries about when to turn it

Partially eaten dinner, still defended.

It didn't burn.

I cut it in half after resting and Wren said it was delicious and I couldn't have a taste.  He actually pointed his knife at me an growled with a mean voice "Not.one.bite."

Frost and I ate canned soup with our chips and salad.

Josh ate about half of his steak and left it on the plate saying he was full.  Beezle waited as I scraped the plates and ate the gristle / fat strip on the edge.  Wren had eaten 3/4 of his half and then he too was full and done and talking about what to cook next time.

There I sat like a seagull watching children spill chips on the boardwalk.

Juicy $24.99/lb steak on the plate, unattended, left for clearing - And.cream.reduction.sauce.  Guess where this is heading?  (The same place it headed a month ago when Fred brought lamb chops...)

Lets just say that there is none left now and until I can remove meat from the area this is how its going to be.  I can't resist the gnaw and grist of it.  

Frost has suggested we make a nut roast with vegan gravy for our next family cook dinner.  I expect to be a vegetarian on that occasion.

Last Days of Summer

After 86 days of summer holidays and well over 2000 miles in the car, it has come to this - the last two days before the kids return to school.

Frost is lying on the couch shouting "I am just sleeping" while Wren bashes him on the butt and head with the handle of a plastic dwarven axe saying "UNCONSCIOUS ELECTROCUTE" and making zzzing noises to the sound of a song I don't know.

I have just fed them lunch while I am fasting - a singularly sacrificial act.  They had to eat their sandwiches, fruit and lentil soup before getting root beer float.  The root beer is one of the last vestiges of summer largess - evocative of the sunflower-yellow 80-degrees of sunshine yesterday when we ate corn soup and apple crumble made from fruit we harvested at Cave B's orchard.  It was so hot we covered the windows with a quilt and squinted at the sun until it dipped towards Phinney Ridge and the evening of growing shadow.

This morning we woke to the sound of rain and the newspaper came in the plastic sleeve they use only when wet weather is forecast.  The lotus flower rainchain burbled with runoff from the gutter outside the kitchen and the grasses that had grown long and leggy fell sideways over the path. 

While they ate lunch Wren asked Frost "What is your favorite food?" and Frost asked "In real life?"  There was a pause as he considered the alternatives.  "No, in Guild Wars..."  If you buy food in Guild Wars the food gives you 'nourishment' which confers an effect such as flight or speed or healing.  Frost says his favorite food is super high level lobster which gives you a ton of health and swiftness for a long time.  The cheese and lentils seem to have conferred plenty of swiftness on Wren but Frost has to be kicked outside to play with Wren in the slippery grass after his couch collapse.  I doubt the outdoor sojourn will last long.  Through the open patio door I can hear Frost tormenting Wren by singing a single repeated word in a staccato monotone while Wren tries to engage the rules of their axe-swinging game, screaming "FROST, FROST, FRRROOOSSSTT!!!" right into his face.

"Sorry, Wren" Says Frost, snapping out of it and kicking off in the swing for distraction while Wren orders the game - describing "bush backs" which are a monster he has imagined, like tree ents but evil, and how they must engage them.

This morning, Frost had his screen time while I worked and Wren was required to play by himself for an hour.  The hour can be broken down into these phases:

Crying [I want you to play a board game with me.  I have nothing to do]

Response: I am not going to play with you.  You are going to find something to do yourself.

Crying face down in red chair in kitchen: [blame and guilting]

Response:  I am going to shut the door.  Here are the things in your cupboard now figure it out.

Silence

Request for supplies (tape, glue)

Silence

Crying:  [I am so embarrassed because you are going to love the thing I made]

Response:  Okay.

Crying:  I want you to see it but I don't.

Response:  I am going to see it now.

Wren runs away then comes back with cautious monitoring of my response.

It turns out Wren spent his hour making coffins from shoeboxes.  They are dramatic gloomy things which are entertaining but hard to consider without smiling.  You must not smile and you must be able to read his pidgin english first time. 

The shoeboxes are called DETHS LAST WRDS and LIFS LAST WRDS.  They are opened with a symbolic key Wren wears around his neck on a chain.  Each contains a poem as follows.  I have translated from pidgin for you and included the original for flavor.  

Death's Last Words.  (Keep Out)

The world of darkness

grows and then

the hand of death

and souls fly around in 

dark and death.

Lifes Last Words

Life is gone

Hope is gone

All lights are dark

Hope's times

are over.

Apparently, this is how he feels when I work and nobody plays with him.  I think we could rework these into a dirge for the end of summer.  In case you are worried, both boxes are empty.  There are no dead cats or stuffies or anything although the bedroom is a mess.

The living room is a mess.

Holiday travel bags are not unpacked.

The fridge is overstuffed with Summer Food and BBQ leftovers.

My plan is to begin to clean today and play some board games.  We have the back to school picnic tonight along with the orientation for new parents.  I am supposed to read and inform about a list of tasks and responsibilities that new parents will assume when school starts - cleaning up after lunch, finding the emergency backpack and supplies, turning up for their workshift.  Really, I will tell them, it will all be a breeze after summer.  Its like the cube root of summer halved.  Back to school time is when we get to be the good guys again - the happy one they come home to, who writes little notes in their lunchbox, who appears early for pickup, who helps with homework.  The times of forced backyard fighting and screen time blackouts and root beers delayed for cheese sandwiches and, god forbid, shutting you in your room to play alone - are OVER!  

Wren rushes in screaming.  Frost comes thudding after him, mock cursing.  They have been whipping each other with the long tendrils I pruned from the wisteria.  Frost runs out the front door.  Wren runs after.  Frost doubles back and Frost locks Wren outside.  Wren thuds at the glass, waving a ti chi sword, perspiration beading his lip. 

Ah, we have had a good run of summer, of fight and freedom but roll me a pumpkin Mr Summer!

Vivre la Fall!

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Wren learned to pogo

We camped

We hiked