My first visit to Texas, Naomi pulled out all the stops, she had other friends to visit. The best part was in the middle of a wonderful dinner prepared by her boss Eric, she was “Oh Eric, let me get your gun.”

Please note the really cool photograph Naomi took in France behind our heads.

I loved it.

I was “Let’s all pose with the gun!”

So I thought that dinner had all the elements that make Texas great.  Her tough guy boss, part owner of a gas related industry company, was creating a wonderful gourmet meal for all of us, including his wife. It was just him being nice. Typically Texan.

Still, don’t forget the gun.  Eric is the nice kind of guy that not only cooks well, but will lend you his gun if you are going hunting.

I hope Naomi can keep typing one handed.  But I wanted to share one of my favorite Texas photographs to perhaps cheer her up while she’s recovering.

Photo: regenexx.com

So, later this week I’m having surgery.  I’ve had a couple surgeries before, but this is the first one where I feel like I’m actually having surgery. (Having my uterus snipped out a few years ago was a non-event. I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my extended family the next day.  Pfft.)

I’m having thumb arthroplasty surgery on my left carpometacarpal (CMC) joint. (Note: This is not carpal tunnel syndrome.) Essentially, I have no cartilage left between the joints, and the years of using anti-inflammatory medications, then cortisone shots directly into the joint, no longer work. This joint is used for the thumb-to-finger pinch movement, so clasping anything, such as picking up a glass of water, has become painful, and I drop sometimes things. Typing doesn’t hurt, but anything that requires using my thumb to pinch or rotate, or putting weight or stress on the thumb, is awful. Even the  thought of moving my thumb from side to side makes me cringe. This is a degenerative disease, and is mostly hereditary. Thanks, Dad!

If you tried to do this to my hand, I’d have to hurt you. Using the other hand.

My Dad and his sister each had both of their hands operated on when they were in their 60s, having the trapezoid bone replaced with a nylon piece. That’s not how it’s done any more. Now, they will remove the bone and use bits of my own tendons, threaded through some holes drilled in adjacent bones, to hold it all together. Hey, a YouTube link !   There is no blood or oozy things, but if you are uber-squeamish, skip the video. It’s about four minutes long.

Cool, eh?

I’m lucky to live in Houston, which has some of the top medical facilities in the United States, and my particular orthopedic surgeon has been frequently listed as one of the top 1% hand surgeons in the US.  He’s sort of the semi-official surgeon to some professional football team that plays around here, as well. I’m going to be in good hands, so to speak. I’ll have to wear a splint for a few days, then some sort of soft splint for six weeks. It could take several months to get my full strength back, but I’m committed to doing my therapy. The next few days will be unpleasant, since I am supposed to quit taking any NSAIDS for a week before the surgery.

Not my actual thumb. Note the lack of space between the bones in the base of the thumb. Ow.

My right thumb will probably need similar surgery some day, although for now, using my meds and getting an occasional shot keeps me functioning. Here’s to science!

Related articles

• Using Orthopedic Implants in Reconstructive Surgery (orthopedics.answers.com)

“They have Necco Wafers!” he will exclaim, ignoring all the real candy with chocolate.

Hard to find, but it never goes bad once you find it.

I have always hated Necco Wafers, mind you I only tried them when young.  Necco Wafers did play a part in my childhood, as my friend and I would play communion and use the wafers.

The brightly colored chalk like substance was a good stand in for what we thought real communion wafers tasted like.  She was Catholic and I was raised High Episcopalian, which means our church services were the same only she could meet the wife and children of the priest at my church.  Poor Father Taylor probably did have to ask his wife just what I meant after I took my first communion wafer from him and said “Oh it is kind of like a Necco wafer.”

Regular communion wafer

If you know communion wafers, you’ll know what I mean.  I’m not talking the lovely baked bread that I would receive when I attended the Congregationalist Church in Connecticut.  I’m talking that thin wafer that refuses to melt as it sticks to the roof of your mouth.  Usually I end up to this day, when taking communion, trying to sing a hymn with the pasty mess still gumming up my mouth.  It’s not correct to take a water bottle to church, as much as I would like to, but it sure would help with my post wafer singing.

Just add color, Necco wafer!

I’m sure that there are 2 assembly lines in the candy factor, one line goes to get the wafers colors and they become Necco Wafers.  The other line leaves the wafers plain and they go to churches.

My husband is well loved by not only myself, but by his youngest daughter.  She will hunt out Necco wafers for her father, and insist I purchase them for him.  I don’t mind, they are a hardy candy.  I can put them away for when he’s had a bad day and

Communion wafers that accidentally fell on the Necco Wafer line.

pull them out.  I don’t think they can go bad.  I read during WWII the candies were a favorite to send to the troops as they just, held up well.

If someone had sent me Necco Wafers, it would just have inspire me to liberate Belgium more quickly ,where they had real candy made with delicious chocolate.

Maybe it is a guy thing.  My brother Paul has been known to not only eat Necco Wafers, but also likes Malted Milk Balls.  Malted Milk Balls often come in a cardboard milk carton, but they are not milk.  It’s a disguise, much like the thin coating of chocolate which tries to fool you into thinking they are a real candy.  They aren’t.

Give me a York Peppermint Patty or a Mounds Bar any day.  Even better, how about some imported Belgium chocolate.  Belgium has a law about the amount of fat chocolate must have to be called chocolate.  That’s why when my husband is in business in Belgium he knows he can go to the food store and buy the cheapest bar marked “chocolate” and it will still make everyone back home rave about how terrific it is.  ”Del Haze” isn’t the name of a fancy chocolatier, it’s the name of the food store.

This is a damn Necco wafer isn’t it? I can only tell as I can peek with this blindfold on.

If it’s not chocolate, it’s not candy.  Also, men will eat just about anything if it has some sugar in it somewhere.  Though I’d like to do a taste test with Necco Wafers and Communion Wafers.  Blindfolded, could men tell the difference?

At one time, this was just fine.

Anyway, HAPPY FLAG DAY!

az

Downtown Coca, Ecuador. Our group can be distinguished by the pale white legs.

After a few days in the Galapagos (described here and here, and here), our group of three dozen friends headed slowly back towards Quito and, for some, the Amazon. Our days of wet and dry landings, staying up all night singing karaoke in the yacht’s bar (I’m looking at YOU, Mark and Irena), alternately wading through creeks, walking over bare lava fields, or trudging through knee-high grass, replete with fire ants and tortoise poop, had come to an end. (Note: When I say “three dozen friends”, I really mean it. There were four people I had never met before. Of the others, I have traveled with all but five of them but know them from conventions and such.)

We spent a great deal of time on buses this day. A local bus took us from our final landing point near the town of Santa Cruz, to the airport on the island. We flew from the island to Quito, with a short stop in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil (recommendation of our tour guide: don’t go there. Not safe, and nothing to see), and then on to Quito and another bus. Here, we parted company. Many people were headed home to Canada, the States, Chile,  or London. Another 90-minute bus ride back into town, as no one has yet built a hotel near the new airport. Or much of a road, for that matter.  Several of us had very early outbound flights the next morning, so we gathered in the hotel restaurant for a parting dinner (it was awful but the company was great).

Early the next morning, and once again a bus ride to the airport, although the smaller group of one dozen meant a smaller bus that could navigate side streets and avoid the horrible traffic of the unfinished highway. I love watching street scenes in places I’ve never been (more after these pictures):

A city contrasts: wealth and poverty, beauty and squalor, parks and high-rises

Overlooking the city. Quito is in the middle of a project to bury all power lines, which will improve the view considerably

Everywhere, people love their dogs

Who is watching who?

Quito sits in a bowl of the Andes at 2800 meters above sea level, so days are frequently overcast. The morning we left for the Amazon was no different. We spent quite a while at the airport, and then in the plane, waiting for the fog to lift. During the 30-minute flight over the Andes , the cloud cover didn’t allow for viewing the mountains, but I recalled my friend telling me she didn’t want to read about me a la Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors.

Coca, Ecuador, is at the confluence of two large Amazonian Rivers, the Coca and the Napo. The small town is pretty much known only as a departure point for eco-tours in the rainforest. Lonely Planet has almost nothing to see about it, either.  But while waiting in the small bus that took us from the tiny airport to the rendezvous with our river boat, I immediately determined what the other main function of this town was:

Weatherford International is one of the largest oilfield service companies in the world, with 50,000 employees. Yep, the oil patch!

I would have enjoyed having a few hours to look around downtown Coca (population 30,000) but we we whisked off to our boats quickly. Our Quito guide did not like this area. According to him, this is where all the Colombians come into the country to sell drugs (Colombians being the source of all crime in the country, according to him), which is why we would see more policemen here, as well as locals and foreigners who come to the city to work in the oil fields. Even the Lonely Planet guidebooks are pretty reticent on the town, merely mentioning a few different river guides that can help you get out of town. I took a few pictures of Coca. Unless you are going to travel up the Napo River, you’ll probably never have a reason to be here.

Coca, Ecuador

Everything is brought to the lodges and fields by boat. We saw semi trucks being hauled down river

Related articles

• Ecuador oil spill pollutes Amazon tributary (fuelfix.com)

Aynsley and Kirsten, born on days reserved for parents!

She then had the happy thought “Oh what if your baby is born on Father’s day?” I laughed, “Mary, for my baby to be born on Father’s Day, she would have to be 2 weeks late!”

Mary, my Lamaze partner with Evelyn. She did a terrific job!

Sure enough, on Father’s Day I was in the small hospital at Two Rivers, Wisconsin having my baby.  I had spent the previous 2 weeks cursing my friend Mary.  I was sure it was somehow her suggesting it would be “really cool” if we had our babies on days dedicated to parents (not children), that made my baby settle in.

Still, the contractions started almost exactly at midnight, and my husband and I duly timed them.  Finally at 2 a.m. we both fell asleep.  I was awoken at 6 a.m. by the baby.  She decided she was rested enough to really get down to business.  My husband was thrilled, and made the joke “This will be the best Father’s Day gift ever!”  Little did we know how everyone we met that day, and for the weeks and years to come, would keep making that joke.

We showed up at the hospital and checked in.  While I knew what was going on, the nurses were confused that my husband was clueless.  We had run into this trouble at the Lamaze classes.  People assumed my other daughter was from my first husband.  In actuality, my husband had been at sea on a submarine when our daughter was born.  My best friend Mary had stepped up to be my partner.

The submarine type my husband was on was a “boomer”.  The Lafayette was called a “boomer” as the submarine was just supposed to stay out and be very quiet, and if needed send nuclear missiles to rain down death and destruction.  I expect if anyone lived through it they might hear a “boom”.

The thing was with the schedule of a “boomer”, which was always at sea with a Blue and Gold rotating crew, you could either be there for the conception, or the birth, but not both.  Since my older daughter, Evelyn, looks  a bit like her father, he was not there for her birth.

Evelyn’s birth at the Navy hospital was natural not by choice, but by orders.  There were 12 births at the small hospital that day.  I was informed unless I had some problem, to expect a nurse midwife and no drugs.  Evelyn was actually delivered by the ER doctor, he was called up as Evelyn decided to come out elbow first and the midwife was not allowed to use forceps.

While I would have chosen drugs, lots of drugs, before giving birth that first time, it had been actually easier than I had thought.   I opted by choice for natural childbirth with my second child.  However, my husband was not Mary.

The Lafayette, a “boomer”

Mary had been kind, loving, helpful, and supportive.  My husband is a man that is rarely ill.  He believes going to the doctor makes  you sick.  He goes to the dentist and counts that as “close enough” to an annual check up.  He is not good in hospitals, and whenever I am sick his support consists of offering me Gatoraide and poking me to see if I’m still alive every now and again.

From the day she was born, she knew she belonged to daddy. Their special bond began the day she was born and my husband (as he tells it) delivered her. Really, he did all the work.

However, when I pointed out I needed his help to have a natural delivery, he decided to take it seriously and go to Lamaze classes with me.  Dr.Larson, who treated our entire family, was worried though. He pointed out that my husband was an engineer.  He said “Engineers are different in the delivery room”

My husband was different.  A wife moaning and trying to find a “happy place”, just confused him.  A machine though, that was familiar territory.  The nurse had shown him how the machine that measured my contractions worked.  His job was to let me know when a contraction was starting so I could take a mental vacation to a beach in Hawaii.  Quickly.

Dr.Larson came into the room to see that my husband had both hands on the machine, and was staring intently as the line showing a contraction started to go up.  My husband was “Oh boy, this is a BIG ONE, a really BIG ONE!”  Mark got that machine through that contraction like a professional.  Dr.Larson threatened to take away the machine if my husband did not hold my hand.  Dr.Larson felt the machine would do just as well with my husband just holding it with one hand.  He also pointed out that saying “Wow, that was HUGE, I thought that contraction would never end”, even if said to the machine and not me, was unhelpful.

These girls still know they lucked out when they got this guy for a father.

My husband did his best, and we were in getting ready for the final push, when my husband said “EVERYONE WAIT!”.  The entire room, doctor and nurses, stopped in confusion.  My husband then flipped over the cassette tape he had help make of “peaceful music” to help me relax.  Mark knew he was in charge of yet another machine, the tape player, and by golly, nothing could go ahead until side B was playing!

This was the cassette player we used. It’s “my first Sony, with animal sounds”. You pushed the buttons and animal sounds came out. At one point Dr.Larson had to get upset with the two nurses as they were playing with it too much.

I’m not sure I can fully write just how crazy this delivery was.  I’ve left out that Dr.Larson came from a huge Father’s Day picnic, he was wearing a bright yellow polo shirt and plaid shorts and flip flops.  He had stopped by when called hoping that this was a false alarm.  He was my family doctor, living in small town Wisconsin it was common to just have  your family doctor deliver your baby.  He sighed when he saw that this time my baby was serious about coming out.  So under his smock and gloves he was wearing funny plaid shorts.  Someone found him some shoes.

Next, there were sirens going off.  My husband probably wanted the peaceful delivery music to continue as we were all a bit stressed.  The sirens were  a tornado warning.  So while the hospital was being getting ready for a possible evacuated to the basement,I was trying to push my baby.  I had a view of the outside from my window. Ominous black clouds worked far better than trying to find a “happy place” to keep my mind off the pain.  I kept looking for a funnel cloud, wondering if my baby would be delivered in a hallway as we rushed to a basement.

In the end, Aynsley made her appearance.  Dr.Larson went to let my husband cut the cord, while I yelled “Don’t let him do anything!” (My faith was a little shaken).  I have to admit he did a good job with the cord cutting.

While Aynsley was being cleaned up, we could hear another delivery next door. The woman was screaming “I want this SH!T to stop NOW!  I can’t take this SH!T anymore! I need more drugs, have I had drugs?”  When we heard she was barely dilated, our room broke out in laughter.  Dr.Larson said “I’m so glad I’m not delivering her baby!  You just produced a 10 pound baby without one curse word!”

My husband, Mark, then took his daughter into his arms.  I wasn’t allowed to hold her first, as this was Father’s Day.  He looked into her eyes, and I could see them instantly fall in love with each other.  Mark jokes that Aynsley looked at him and said “Hi dad, hey who’s that sorry looking woman on the bed there?”  She had only eyes for daddy.  The doctor finally had to ask for Aynsley back as he needed to take her to be checked out more thoroughly, and I had to ask to see the baby.  Oh yeah, mom might want a peek.

Since then, it’s been a mutual love story.  He will remind her over the years “You are my gift!”  She will joke she doesn’t have to buy him anything for Father’s Day as she already had given him the best gift ever.

I’m still second place!

As for my friend Mary, she never did end up making birthday cakes for every Mother’s day.  She was diagnosed with cancer, and died before Kirsten’s 3rd birthday.  Her husband, our dear friend Norman, raised his daughter alone.  He remarried, and Kirsten’s step mother has proven to be a terrific mother, but I often think of Mary.  Every milestone in my daughter’s life, reminds me of what Mary has missed.  Still, I know Mary would be proud of what a wonderful job her husband has done raising Kirsten. He has proven, as has my husband, that fathers are very important.

Norman and Kirsten and Mark and Aynsley. Little did Norman know that he would have to potty train Kirsten on his own! He proved a terrific father, having to step up to the role of single parent after the tragic death of his wife.

So happy Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there!

Related articles

• Father’s Day (beyondautismawareness.wordpress.com)
• Father’s Day Memory Book (2kousins.com)

Believe it or not, this really helped someone understand a concept I was explaining

“You NEVER did that to us. You always tried to answer our questions” he proclaimed.

I liked to think I tried. Part of me believes I would have made a decent science teacher or math teacher. I like to explain things, look for ways to illustrate a difficult concept in layman’s terms and make it as interesting to the listener as I find it. My sons knew that if they had a math or science question, bring me a pad of paper and a pencil or else I couldn’t help them. That’s translated to my work, where I have a huge whiteboard on one wall so I can talk. I also have put whiteboards in my staff’s offices. I also carry around a Moleskine (which I blogged about here), so that I’m never without something to take notes or sketch out a concept. The nice thing about using a whiteboard, even if you can’t afford the fancy ones that capture your drawings to a computer, is that you can take a picture of it and use it later as evidence of first conception for a patent application or for a memory refresher.

When the boys were fairly young, one of them asked me something about how the sun “goes down” at night. I drew a dot on an orange, and using a flashlight, I showed how a person on the Earth (the dot) goes in and out of the sunlight as we rotate on our axis.

All you need to teach Astronomy Lesson No 1. The Earth spins and revolves around the sun.

Another thing I did was keep my collection of science fiction and fantasy books at their eye level. SF books are well-known to have pretty lurid or purely awful covers (here and here and HERE), which would catch the eyes of my budding young minds. Richard is a gifted artist, and started drawing from the time he could hold a crayon in his chubby little fingers. His interest in the colorful art tempted him to read the books. I firmly believe good science fiction is a great way to get children thinking about possibilities, science, and the Other.

At this point it had grown out to a bob. I still wasn’t happy.

I couldn’t wait to not only grow it out, but to grow it as long as I could.  This lasted through school when I finally got a nice shoulder length style, though I cried for days after getting it cut.  I still haven’t been able to give in to suggestions I would “look great” with a really short style I could “really style”!

Now this was HAIR, but shortly after this photograph I decided it was time to stop over compensating and cut my hair to shoulder level.

Other people look wonderful with their short hair they can spike up.  My younger daughter happily chose to cut her hair not only short, but to shave part of her head, when she grew up.  My own hair issues had me rarely taking my 2 daughters to get a hair cut.

My daughter can really rock short hair.

My own hair dresser has the most wonderful short hair.  She looks “sassy” and yet also refined and put together.  In fact all the stylists at the hair salon, Mia Capelli in Keene NH, seem to have wonderful short hair styles.  I just can’t bring myself to even try one, even though I have been told again and again “It will always grow out!”

My mother, and other women, informed me to enjoy my long hair while I was young.  The rule seemed to be after 40, or in same cases 30, you had to have short hair.  Your hair changes with age, and “no one looks good with longer hair after 40″.

40 came and went a long time ago.  While my hair is not terribly long, it is also not short.  I’ll go to shoulder length, but the short pixie of my youth still haunts me.  I admire my friends like Natalie that pull off short hair with such ease, she can just blow dry, style and go.

New hair products, and my remarkably talented hair colorist and stylist, Kelly, have kept my hair from looking dry and old.

I also noticed a lot of my friends, over 40, also keeping their hair at least at shoulder length.  So sorry mom, the new 40 is 60.  Or maybe even 70?  Who knows?

Chip Taylor photographed my friends and myself at a wedding. I’m pretty sure we’re all over 40. But we look great and our hair stylists are probably very well paid!

Sixty years later, with my sons in 2004, on the same beach.

A place to bury our dead.

Anolis Carolinensis

Americans seem to have woken up to the fact that chameleons are not found in the US, and that the small lizard sold in pet stores as the “American Chamelon” is actually an anole. I had these are pets at several times during my life, and a few stories emerged. This is the story of Simon. (My son Simon is NOT named after the lizard. The lizard was named after Simon in Lord of the Flies.)

I bought him from Armstrong’s Animals, a small pet store in my home town of Salem, MA. Simon was special because at some point his tail had broken off and all that remained was a cute little club.

I made a nice terrarium for him with a log, moss and a tiny water feature, and so far as I could tell he seemed quite happy there. He would cock his head at me and jump about his cage, and seemed very eager to enjoy whatever morsels I had for him. Anoles eat only living things, so I had to buy baby crickets every once in awhile. I soon learned that it was easier to catch food for him, with spiders being a favorite.

One day as I was staring into his plastic enclosure, I saw some movement on the water. A minuscule transparent bubble with legs was slowly walking across the surface. It was at the absolute limit of my vision, and as this was the pre-Internet days, I had no way to find out what it was. Years later I learned it was a tardigrade*. If you don’t know what that is prepare to be amazed by the link. My pet apparently had his own far more interesting pet.

That summer, I got a job driving a school bus at a summer camp in New Hampshire. I saw no reason that Simon couldn’t come. Though I slept in a tent in the woods, Simon would follow me around. He had little choice really, as I was carrying his cage. I made him a special shelf in the school bus and the kids though it was cool that the bus driver had his own lizard.

It always looked like a lion to me

A child named Kevin didn’t seem to fit in with the rest, so I decided to take a risk and let him be the ONLY KID who could hold Simon. And to my relief, he was gentle and didn’t let Simon hop off into the pine forest. This special status didn’t help Kevin get along with his peers, but he would follow me around as I set up various camp activities. He’d tend to Simon (which meant staring at him in his cage) while I set up nature trails or put out boxes of government issue raisins and peanuts.

One morning as I was setting up archery targets, I gave Simon to Kevin. We were talking about Star Wars I think, and as I was tying a target to its stand, I heard wizzz THUNK. I turned around and there was Kevin, arm outstretched and bow vibrating in his hand. He had fired an arrow down range at the very target I was working on, and he hit it.

An unforgettable sound

At that moment I realized that what Kevin needed wasn’t an “adult” (I was only 18) friend, but perhaps a bit of counseling from a trained professional. Rather than start screaming at him, I calmly reiterated the rules about archery equipment, and asked him to promise to never fire an arrow outside of archery class ever again. He agreed, and there were no more incidents.

After camp ended, I went back to Salem College in Salem WV, and Simon joined me. We had a lovely semester together with no real incidents. It was one of the happiest periods of my life truth be told, and having Simon there just seemed perfect somehow.

When Christmas break came, a friend who was flying home asked if I could watch her hamster. The hamster’s cage was big and my car was small, so I had to figure out how to get it to Massachusetts and back. I hit upon the bright idea of collapsing the hamster’s cage, which saved significant space… and then… hmm, Simon has a cage…

Not knowing how an anole and a hamster would co-habitate  I carefully constructed a wall and gave them each half of the plastic cage. It was smaller than a loaf of bread, but I figured it would be fine for a 17-hour car ride. Simon had always just sat there during our many bus rides together, and I figured the hamster would curl up and sleep.

1980 Datsun 510 Hatchback

At about the 4 hours mark, we pulled over in some forgotten coal town and I opened the hatchback to check on the critters. I saw the hamster (whose name was “Teddy” I think) sitting in a corner contentedly doing that “mad-scientiest-hand-rubbing” thing that animals seem to do. I didn’t see the anole at first.

Anoles are confused with chameleons because they both change color, so I figured he had turned brown and was blending in with the cedar chips and sticks. But then I noticed that the wall between the hamster and the anole had a perfectly round hole in it. I had made the wall out of available materials, and those materials were cardboard. The hamster had chewed himself a door, and now had access to the entire cage. In fact, he had the entire thing to himself.

Simon was no where to be found. He had either escaped (I could find no holes in the cage), or the hamster availed himself of the protein as a road snack. If he did so, he left no trace at all.

…

I tried to be philosophical about it. Simon had killed and eaten dozens of spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, worms, beetles and ants in his life. Why not meet his demise at the chattery hands of a hamster? And if a cat should eat the hamster, hakuna matata and all that. But even though I cared for the hamsters needs that weekend, I could never care for the hamster, and I was happy to hand it back at the end of the trip. Simon may have never known that I existed, but nearly 30 years later—nearly 10 times the normal lifespan of an anole, I remember him.

*Some have questioned whether it’s possible to see a tardigrade with the naked eye, but I’m convinced that I did. I an nearsighted with extremely good close up vision, and this was about the smallest object I could discern.