Soccer victory!

I went with Eric to Inga and Ivy's indoor soccer game. They won 7-0. Inga scored 5 goals and Ivy 1. Wow! I managed to catch 5 of the 7 goals on camera. Inga was especially proud of goal #3, which was a beautiful header from a long kick.



I got so engrossed in work this morning that I didn't exercise. "I'll just sit down for a few minutes and then I'll go exercise..." turned into it being close to noon and I was still sitting in my PJs working on things! Oh well.

Zari helped me spread the rest of the mulch. If we had more time, I would have done one more truck load. But this will have to do for now. One more day of school! Then off we go to France.

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Mulch!

Eric borrowed a huge dump truck from the university, and we went to pick up a load of mulch. We got it dumped in several piles and partially spread.

My day was busy, between biking Ivy to school, exercising at the university, getting more last things done for German Breech Pro, making flyers for workshops in Costa Rica (sadly, not me who is going there!), running errands to the Post Office and Home Depot. I also baked 4 loaves of sourdough bread.

Inga had her last soccer practice with her team in Indianapolis. It's been crazy how much driving we have done (we, meaning mostly Eric and me a few times). But she really loves the team. We'll see if it's feasable next year. I sometimes have to put my foot down and say, "Yes, I know X is a great thing, but it's too much." Too much time, too much money, whatever it may be. Eric has a harder time saying no to things.

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Our boiler shorted out again today! Fortunately I just had to hit the "reset" button and it came back on.

The kids got rides to school because it was raining in the morning with rain forecast all afternoon. It actually wasn't at all bad by the afternoon but they got lucky. I took advantage of using the car to exercise at the university (elliptical + weight machines).

I've been working on the last few hours of video for the German version of Breech Pro. Just a few days left and it will be ready for its public debut!

Inga came home with a bad headache. She almost didn't go to soccer practice but changed her mind last minute. She napped in the car on the way there and seemed much improved after that rest.

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A cold, rude awakening

I woke up around 4 am with my head feeling suspiciously cold. I stayed in denial and then finally got up to get a drink of water, go to the bathroom, etc. I could hear the boiler running but when I felt the radiators, they were stone cold.

Houston, we have a problem. That problem means our boiler is not working. I went downstairs to check on the thermostat: 63 F and falling. Then I trekked to the basement: sure enough, there was an error code displayed. I tried resetting the system but the same arrow code kept flashing.

I went back under the covers and tried (and failed) to get back to sleep, composing emails in my head to our HVAC company. I had a few brief dreams when I managed to snooze a little, in which our boiler was miraculously fixed! Alas, it was even colder in our house when my alarm rang.

We all huddled under blankets as we got ready. I wrote the emails (not in my head!) and hoped for the best. I got a call back after I had dropped Ivy off at school on bike. I inquired about the warranty on our heat exchanger, the part that has been leaking for a while. Good news: it's still under warranty. Bad news: the boiler was never registered iwth the manufacturer and our original installer is no longer business (and who knows if he's still alive--he was old when he put it in almost 10 years ago). My next task: going through mountains of paperwork in my files to hunt down proof of installation. I managed to find something from the original installer with the install date and we think we actually can get the heat exchangee replaced under warranty!

The repair person fixed the other issue, which was a loose ignition cable. It took several hours for the house to come back to normal temperatures, so I spent the morning wearing my winter coat.

Anyway, I know it's a whole lot of talking about something so mundane that most of you have gone off to do something else already. But that's my life! And I am so grateful for a functioning boiler.

I worked on designing a new apparel logo for Breech Without Borders ("Globalize Breech Birth") that will be embroidered on t-shirts, aprons, hoodies, etc. It's the slogan of our upcoming fundraiser as we raise funds for global breech education. Here's my mockup on a navy blue background. It will be 3 colors of thread: aqua, white, and pale green.

I helped Ivy do her Christmas shopping for the family. One down, several more to go! I also worked on Ivy's water goddess. It's coming together nicely.

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Brrrr!

I went to Inga's 3rd tournament in 3 days, again driving an hour each way. It was SO COLD. It rained all the way there, and then then when the rain slowed down the wind was ripping through us. I had every layer on possible, plus a felted wool sweater blanket, and it was absolutely not enough.

During halftime, I went back into the car and stayed there. I had a really good view of the goal that her team was now trying into score into. So I stayed in and kept myself warm during the second half. They ended up in a 1-1 tie.

We kept the heat way up the whole way home and Inga was still complaining about being cold. She ate a ginormous 1' long sandwich, drank a bottle of orange-mango juice, and still had room to spare.

We played Apples To Apples with everyone but Dio (he was next to us working on homework). Ivy learned a new word, "sultry," which she used later on in the evening. She was giving me a back massage, and she said, "I am giving you a massage so Papa doesn't need to give you a sultry back massage."

Eric and I packed up most of our closet and dresser, plus bathroom toiletries.

My new blackout curtains arrived. I hemmed them to the right length and put them up. I am looking forward to a dark night's sleep!

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Inga had an intense game this morning. It was 1-1 and then the other team scored right at the very end. (Eric was there, not me, so I was getting text updates).

Ivy biked with me to the thrift store that has a $0.75 sale on the first Saturday of every month. We found a few things, including a dark teal men's button-down shirt that I am going to remodel to fit Zari. The checkout line was crazy long!

We did a big deep clean this afternoon of several bedrooms. We've been working our way through the house as we prepare for our annual migration to France. We watched a fantastic movie tonight: Jules. So unexpected.

One more soccer tournament tomorrow, which I'll be taking Inga to. I'll do my usual pancake breakfast since her game doesn't start until late morning.

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Soccer tournament 1 of 3

I forgot to write last night, or rather by time I remembered I was already in bed. Inga and I got home late from an evening tournament north of Indianapolis. Her team won 9-1, with Inga scoring 5 of the goals!

It was a cold, surreal game with fog and light mist falling. With the bright lights, the air turned a ghostly white. 

I was bundled up under a double layer of wool blankets, hat, gloves, winter coat, and umbrella.

Inga has another tournament game this morning (they just left a few minutes ago) and the last one tomorrow morning.

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Best airplane ever

I had a thought today: "Hmmm, I'd really like to hang up some room-darkening curtains in our bedroom." This led me down a slippery slope: well, I should really put up the new curtain rods that I bought years ago...but to put the curtain rods up, I should repaint the window frame because I don't want to take the curtain rods down again to repaint later...but I can't just repaint, I have to scrape all the loose paint off and then prime the bare spots."

I fell down that rabbit hole but by the end of the day, it's all repaired, painted, cleaned up, and new curtain rods up. I still don't actually have the any curtains--those are on order! But I am *ready* for new curtains.

Other news today: my morning started off VERY early with a Grand Rounds presentation for VCU Medical Center in Richmond. I did a short overview of the evidence on term breech (a 25-minute verison of what often is a 60-90 minute lecture) and then the last half of the hour was a presenation about physiological breech birth, illustrated with several videos. Good Q&A afterwards, too.

Inga came in several times during my lecture, frantic because she had forgotten to print off the written part of her presentation about airplanes. I kept gesturing to her that I couldn't help her. At one point she held up a sign, but I couldn't stop the meeting. She finally went to school feeling a bit panicked. But never fear! I emailed her teacher and brought the printed copies to school shortly thereafter.

Inga was super excited that her airplane projects were voted "Best Airplane Ever" by her classmates. She did two airplanes even though the assignment only called for one. This is what we were working on late last night.

Inga's friend was in a community theater production of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." I took her to see it tonight. I'm a bit ashamed to say that this was the first time I had ever been inside our local theater in the 15+ years we have lived here!

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Inga had a 7:30 pm practice with her team that's almost 90 minutes away! This is the third day in a row that her team has held practices. I had to drive her tonight because Eric was coaching Ivy's indoor team. Way too much driving, but Inga loves the team.

It's currently well after 11 pm and Inga is still working on a school project for tomorrow. She's building a Wright Brothers flyer out of kebab sticks, toothpicks, and linen.

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Another day driving the kids. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Inga is building a wood & fabric replica of the Wright Brothers airplane for a class project. My bedside table is covered with shishkebab sticks, toothpicks, and glue gun supplies.

I had a fairly tedious workday editing manuscripts (specifically, turning a video lecture into something that reads more like a written text). The material is interesting but the editing is tedious.

I have to exercise a wee bit of artistic license in turning speech into writing. When we speak, we stop and start. Our ideas sometimes go backwards and loop back around later on. It makes sense when you hear it, but not so much when it's written down. My job is to put everything back in proper order, eliminate redundancies, and add in the occasional word or phrase so that the intended meaning is clear.

For the first in maybe the history of our family, Eric made something that was a flop among all of the kids (a lamb dish). It may have been the cut of meat itself. Or maybe it was just that those ingredients didn't mix well with lamb. Who knows? Something smelled and tasted a little "off," even to me. Freeze family first. I joked, "Well, if we all start puking and having diarrhea tonight, we'll know it was food poisoning!"

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I took pity on the kids and drove them to school. We're in a cold snap the next few days. My Minnesotan self scoffs at my wimpy children. Since I had the car, I went to the university to exercise.

I spent all day editing video captions and then editing them again to be suitable for a text-based booklet (to be sent to translators). Really fiddly work. My butt hurts. My back hurts. But it's done!

I helped Zari with her math homework and managed to re-teach myself hyperbolas so I could help her. It took a bit of head-scratching--I haven't done this since 11th grade!--but we figured it out. She said, "Why can't the two of you be math teachers? It would make my life so much easier?" Well, we're not math teachers but we are really good English professors and I'm still not half bad at math, even after all these years.

A short video of Dio's indoor soccer game on Saturday. 

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Snow!

It snowed for an hour today! But it didn't stay because it was too warm on the ground.

Ugh, we have to start school again tomorrow. It's supposed to be well below freezing in the mornings, which means chilly bike rides for all of us except Inga, who walks.

We watched The Adjustment Bureau today. It was pretty good.

I made turkey tettrazini for dinner. We used to eat this quite often as children, especially after Thanksgiving. I haven't made it for years! After this, I'm putting the rest of the turkey in the freezer. I'll pull it out in a week or so. Otherwise we've eaten all of our leftovers except for a slice of cake and pie and a few cornbread muffins.

I started working on an ocean goddess for Ivy's room. Several years ago, I made Pele and Tefiti. But I never had time to finish the third one. I found an image and Ivy gave me her approval. It will all be done with fabric appliques, as with the other two that I made. That's my last big project for the fall!

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Soccer and cisterns

Another big soccer day. Eric took Ivy and Inga to two indoor games this morning. He came back and an hour later, I took Dio to two indoor games while Eric and the other kids went to a community festival at the university. Eric sold some of his books and then went out to eat with a few other authors.

I did more sewing and now Ivy has two sets of linen pillowcases, one with pleats and the other without.

Dio, Zari, and I watched The Truman Show. I saw it when it first came out, and it was fun to revisit that movie after so many years.

I had a meeting this morning with a local brick mason. I have several little masonry projects on a few properties and was thrilled to find someone who could do them. I probably could but I don't have enough time!

One of them is to redo the cistern lids on a few of the properties. We opened up our own cistern and it is HUGE. It may very well take up half of our back yard. It's still functional (our gutters drain into underground drain pipes that lead into the cistern). In fact, our home water supply used to be via the cistern; we still have the original pump that brought the water in, but the pump is now disconnected from the indoor plumbing.

So interesting how these things used to function. It would be fun to hook up a sump pump and use it for garden irrigation. Not like we really need to water things here in humid, wet Indiana! But some years we do have relative droughts.

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Mini meals and a bedspread 11 years in the making

I am thrilled to announce that I finally finished Ivy's bedspread. It only took me 11 years! I dyed it when I was pregnant with Ivy. I turned some of the dyed fabric into ombre linen ring slings but the rest sat for years.

I had originally planned to embellish each 18" square of fabric with a sort of rosette in the middle and place pleats around each edge. But I was never able to get it to look right. I finally came up with the idea of sewing parallel lines of pleats to give the cover some extra texture.

The bedspread is more turquoise/aqua than it looks in the photos. The pillowcases are the palest shade of turquoise.

Inga cooked a miniature meal for Dolly. She handmade the noodles and the minature buns. The menu was: mini buns with butter, mini turkey burger, mini ramen, mini pesto pasta, mini cake & mini pumpkin pie. So clever.

Dio and Eric went to a sports store to try on shoes. Dio's feet have grown again! He found a pair of shoes online that he's begging to have. "They're on sale! But only today!" I said I'd think about it for an early Christmas present. They are Air Jordans and I am certain Dio wants them due to watching Lupin, where the main character has multiple pairs of Air Jordans in every color.

Granted, shoes are a useful present--they'll get worn every day. So I'm not 100% opposed.

Dio had to carve a pumpkin for biology class. He made a tree with a swing.

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What a lovely day. It was busy in the morning but everyone helped. The kids cleaned the house and then helped with various cooking prep. We had:

- roast turkey (of course!)
- mashed potatoes with browned butter and sour cream
- gravy
- green beans
- green salad with roasted sweet potato & pomegranate seeds
- sourdough rolls
- regular cornbread
- jalapeño, habañero, & cheddar cornbread
- mushrooms roasted in garlic & balsamic vinegar
- crackers with smoked salmon, pickles, & olives
- crème brûlée
- pumpkin pie & whipped cream (brought by a guest)
- browned butter butternut squash cake with browned butter frosting

Needless to say, we have enormous amounts of food left over. Yay! No cooking needed for several days.

We had some family time late afternoon and evening once our guests were gone. We watched the last episode of Lupin (season 3) and right before bed, The Naked Gun. The kids were laughing and groaning because it was so bad.

We took a walk together after the sun set. The kids had so much energy.

And sorry, no pictures! Too busy cooking and then eating 🙂

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Still sick

I've been under the weather still and was just too tired to write in my journal the last few nights. I was feeling on the mend, but then it got worse again. It's nothing that I can really point to other than a general malaise, fatigue, and occasional body aches. I'm able to work if I'm sitting down at my desk, but anything else wears me out. 

But...I tested myself and it's not Covid. Phew.

Inga missed both days of school this week. But she seems recovered today.

Eric brought all the kids grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. "We spent under $300...barely!" Zari announced when they came home. Eek!

Prepped today:

• sourdough is folded and rising
• crème brûlée is cooked and cooling in the fridge
• turkey is thawing
• browned butter is prepared, ready to turn into browned butter butternut squash cake with browned butter cream cheese frosting (we may not eat this for Thanksgiving since we have 2 other desserts already!)
• drinks are outside cooling off

The kids are in charge of 1) cleaning the house and then 2) helping cook. 

The turkey has to be in the oven by 9 am, then we'll work on mashed potatoes, cornbread, stuffing, sourdough rolls, green beans, brussels sprouts, and a salad.

Today I heard Ivy and Inga giggling in the upstairs hallway. Here's what I found on my phone...

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We all attended Zari's play, the last performance. Most of the actors spoke so fast that about 50% of the dialogue got lost. Someone needs to tell the theater director to slow those kids down!

We had our usual pancake breakfast this morning.

Inga started feeling sick this evening, the same thing that Ivy and I had. I had her take a hot shower and tucked her into bed early. I'm feeling not 100%, but better than yesterday.

We have leaves that need to be raked, probably the final time for the season. I did a few minutes and then realized that I was pushing myself too much.

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Ivy and I came down with something yesterday. I had obligations that I couldn't get out of--running the bake sale during Zari's theater performance. I felt ok earlier on in the day and baked sourdough bread and cookies for the bake sale. But as the afternoon wore on, I was feeling increasingly worse.

I powered through the bake sale and play performance, barely. It was fun to watch--I wish I hadn't been feeling so icky, though.

Zari played the role of a butler in the play "Charlie's Aunt." It's a comedy written in the late 1800s and was surprisingly good despite its age. She had to wear a wig, which was so close to her normal hair color that many people thought she had cut her hair again!

I've been in or near my bed most of today. Eric ran around like crazy. Ivy and Inga had 2 games this morning, and then right after he got home and grabbed a bit to eat, he had to turn around and drop Zari off for her next performance and then bring Dio to his soccer game.

Zari was complaining of being bored today, so we pulled out several boxes from the attic closet. Some were filled with photos going back to my high school years. Others were papers and other memorabilia from high school and college. I did some decluttering (who needs articles that I photocopied back in 1999?) and reorganizing. It was fun to look through so many old photos and the memories associated with them.

Oh, and here are a few fun pictures from the Louisville Breech & Twins conference that someone just sent me. One is me with my giant pelvis, the other is me and Gail Tully. She was demonstrating something about pelvic anatomy and maternal movement, I just can't remember what exactly!

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Home!

It's great to be back with Eric and the kids.

I got home late afternoon. Eric and Ivy picked me up from the airport. I had an accidental early start (3:30 am) and couldn't get back to sleep after I woke up. I'm definitely ready for bed!

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Busy all day teaching! It was a great workshop and fun to try out a new format. I'm very excited to be home tomorrow.

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