Mixed Math

Right when I think I’ve got a hold on math, things get crazy. Consider, if you will, the concept of percentiles. I thought I understood it. If someone was in the 85^th percentile for the SATs, it meant that he’d scored “as good as or better than” 85 out of 100 people who took the test. Easy-peasy, right?

When the pediatric nurse indicated on Mia’s two-week checkup records that she was 75^th percentile for weight and 90^th for height, I knew what was up. She was a big, healthy baby. Cool.

At her six-month checkup, when her data showed 90^th percentile for weight and 95^th for height, I was a bit surprised, but not shocked.

Her twelve-month checkup arrived.  When her weight registered at the 80^th percentile, and the nurse recorded her height in the 100^th percentile, I was completely flummoxed.

According to my understanding of percentiles, my child was “as tall as or taller than 100 out of 100 children.”

Clearly this meant that I was the parent of the tallest baby in the world. I wondered if the Guinness folks would be in touch. Should I contact the local newspaper?

How was this even mathematically possible?

Well, I still don’t know, to tell you the truth, but I did recently(ish) learn about an algebraic concept that might help in understanding this phenomenon. The concept is called “asymptote” and the vessel for this math-mcnugget was the book Drive by Daniel Pink.

Fascinating read about human motivation.

Definitely recommend it.

It’s my understanding that an asymptote is one of those things that approaches perfection—100%--but can never quite achieve it. The book references artist Paul Cezanne and athlete Tiger Woods and their lifelong pursuit of mastery in their respective talents. Both are humble enough to understand that no matter how good they get, there will always be an opportunity for improvement.

Looks like understanding math is going to be my mastery asymptote-quest in life. Certainly enough room for improvement in this area.

In the meanwhile, if you’ve got ten minutes and forty-eight seconds to spare, you might enjoy watching the RSA Animate (LOVE them!) video summarizing Daniel Pink’s studies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Lightning Mike

Our friend Mike had an inside track to the weather. He’s a Silicon Valley-type salesman with the soul of a storm chaser. Ominous clouds on the southwest horizon? Lightning Mike’s Facebook updates and forecasts were more accessible and more reliable than most of the meteorologists on TV. Consequently, his page was my first stop if I needed personalized predictions for our evening’s activities. Especially if it was starting to look like our evening’s activities might involve rounding up the family to duck and cover in our tornado safety area.

***

Around this time, Mike also started posting updates about local emergencies. Sirens in the distance? I knew I could count on Mike for the scoop. I no longer had to drive myself crazy wondering and worrying compulsively about what was going on in our community—the information gave immediate comfort that my nearest and dearest loved ones were safe and sound. Sirens no longer brought an irrational fear that Russ had been in a car wreck—one quick check to Mike’s Facebook page would quickly reveal a grease fire (presently being contained, emergency personnel on site) at an obscure restaurant in a stripmall.

This reassurance brought bliss. It was nice to have someone who was as passionate (read: obsessive) about weather and emergencies as I, especially when that someone was motivated to keep the rest of us informed.

Springtime in Texas means frequent storms, so as the weeks and dark clouds rolled by, I found myself relying on Lightning Mike’s information more and more often. Sometimes he didn’t have updates posted even when there were troublesome clouds clearly forming in the sky, so I would contact him to ask if he’d heard anything about the impending weather.

“You know,” he said, after the seventeenth time that I’d emailed asking for an update, “You could sign up to receive the very same updates that I do. It’s easy—you just go to this storm page and this scanner site and “like” their pages to receive all the information to your very own Facebook feed.”

It had not occurred to me that I, too, could have the keys to the kingdom. This was going to be great!

I signed up that afternoon, right after work, and I waited for the magic to happen.

Did it ever!

My Facebook feed was instantly inundated. Our area was much busier than I’d thought. Every few minutes, new snippets of local information were being added. I’m a relatively fast and capable reader, but I could hardly keep up.

There was so much to know! I missed dinner that night because there was no good moment—no natural pausing point—to tear myself away. Bedtime for the kids came and went, and I was still glued to the updates. Bedtime for adults arrived. Long after Russ had turned off the light and dozed off, I was still lying there, bug-eyed and reading in the glow of the phone.

Accidents and fires.

Shootings, hostage situations, high speed chases.

Missing children. Dozens of them.

Flash flood warnings and forest fires from lightning strikes.

All live, late-breaking, and local.

What kind of insensitive person would fall asleep knowing that there was chaos in her community?

I stayed awake all night, reading the posts and pondering God’s existence. How could all this awful stuff be happening? Was there no mercy and peace left in the world?

Exhausted and fearful, I arrived at work the next morning and powered off my phone. No way could I concentrate to teach if those news blurbs were accessible.

I zombied through the day as best I could, fearing the vast number of bad events that undoubtedly would have accumulated by the time I returned home.

“I tried to call you from the grocery store, but it went straight to voicemail,” Russ said that evening.

“Must’ve forgotten to turn on my phone,” I muttered, avoiding his gaze to conceal my bloodshot eyes.

A few hours later, he asked if I’d seen the most recent hilarious cat picture that George Takei had posted.

But I had not. I’d made up my mind; I was never checking Facebook again. Ever. The world was a horrible place. Especially our community, it seemed. Death, destruction, doom. Bad news as far as the eye could read. I was going to insulate myself in denial and never check Facebook again.

If I couldn’t see it, then it wasn’t happening. Returning to ignorance—now THAT would be blissful.

Two evenings later, the sky darkened and Russ asked if I had any weather updates from my new fantastic source. I burst into tears and confessed everything. “It’s terrible! It’s overwhelming! It’s nothing but bad news!”

“I’m sorry,” he said mildly, and then he added, “Um, what were you expecting?” I thought I detected the faintest hint of sarcasm, but I let it go.

He agreed that ignorance sounded like the best policy in this circumstance, and he even offered to sign on to my Facebook account and un-”like” the sites for me.

Noticing my activity had resumed on Facebook, I guess, Mike enthusiastically asked if I was enjoying all the first-hand information. I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t really want to start thinking about it again since I’d only just returned to sleeping through the night.

As it turns out, Lightning Mike, you are all the bad news a girl could ever want or need.

It wasn’t a very good explanation, but I just couldn’t spend another moment thinking about it, or else all those feelings and fears would swell up and carry me away.

We didn’t really talk about it ever again. Lightning Mike is a very dear friend. I think he understood.

Killer BBQ

It’s 8 am on a Thursday. The family’s departed for school and work, and I’m in the kitchen with pens, paper, and half the spices from the pantry scattered out across the counter, experimenting with ingredients until I’ve created the perfect BBQ sauce. You might think I don’t have anything better to do. Not true! I am doing this because I have SO many things to do. This is just one of the many ways that I procrastinate, but the results will be worth it. You have no idea the lengths that I will go to for a good BBQ sauce.

The day they invent a pill that can replace 100% of the nutritional value of three square meals a day, I’m done eating forever. Food, blech. Overwhelming to buy, messy to prepare, and time-consuming to eat. There’s so much I’d rather do with all that time and energy.

Few things in the culinary world are worth the effort and expense for me. BBQ is one of them. Forget the meat and just give me that sauce.

Nothing you can buy in a bottle at the grocery store could possibly compare to the sauce from a pit-smoker BBQ shack. Years ago on a trip to San Antonio (Or as Russ calls it, ‘The city so nice, we flew there twice—in a five hour span’) one of my BBQ sauce hankerings hit, and we ended up walking six miles across the city to satisfy it. In improper footwear, excessive heat, and through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods.

Totally worth it.

Fortunately, fate led us to an accidental discovery of an even better sauce that is much closer to home. Kenny’s Wood-Fired Grill in Addison, which might be the best restaurant in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and quite possibly the world, has a sauce that hits all the right notes. 

Sweet, savory, and spicy in all the right places of your tongue, this sauce makes you consider asking the waiter for a pint glass and a straw. (Depending on how many Grey-Goose-on-tap martinis you’ve knocked back, you might actually ask the waiter for these items and then have to pretend that you were joking. Hypothetically.)

To my knowledge, only one menu item is served with this magical elixir. The conceptually-criminal tenderloin meatloaf sandwich is the opposite of a travesty. It is divine. To ignore the ramekin of BBQ sauce is to miss out on an utterly decadent experience.

When packing up our leftovers, the thoughtful waiter included an extra to-go dish of the BBQ sauce. His actions may have changed my life, for as I dipped my finger in to taste, taste, taste the following day, I realized that maybe I could try to replicate the sauce at home.

The experiment became a family affair. We worked as a team to make guesses about the ingredients, comparing my progress to the precious drops that remained at the bottom of the Styrofoam to-go bowl.

Pinch, dash, splash.

At long last, we agreed. I’d nailed it. We all stood around the mixing bowl in a dreamy sauce stupor, until Hannah broke the trance by asking if I’d recorded the ingredients so we could have it again and again.

Dash-nabbit!

So, here I am, actively avoiding all the chores, tasks, and errands of the day by replicating and recording in order to create an official recipe. Posting it has two main benefits—I’ll be able to locate it for future reference, and if you’re feeling adventurous (or procrastinate-ful) you can create a jar of joy for your own family to drink—Err, I mean—enjoy.

Killer BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

Wet stuff:

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup ketchup (Not sure if brand matters, I used Simply Heinz)

1 tablespoon molasses

1/8 teaspoon liquid smoke (I actually used ¼ teaspoon, and it was almost too much)

Dry stuff:

2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed

3 teaspoons chili powder

2 teaspoons cumin

1.5 teaspoons crushed red pepper

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon oregano

½ teaspoon dry mustard

½ teaspoon black pepper

Directions

1.       Dump all the ingredients into a glass jar (I used a pickle jar, but I bet a spaghetti sauce jar would work, too.)

2.       Put on the lid; Shake it until it's thoroughly mixed.

3.       Let it set up a bit in the fridge before you impress your friends and loved ones.

4.       Enjoy on anything. Or everything. Or by itself with a straw.

 

Just do it.

You don’t need to convince me that fitness is important. I know the value of it—I’ve got a Thighmaster under the bed, a big rubber ball for sit-ups in the closet, and a ton of workout DVDs. Somewhere around here I’ve even got hypnosis CDs to inspire healthy eating and enthusiasm for exercise. It’s the motivation that’s lacking, for when it comes to actually exercising, I am a fortress of fitness resistance.

“Why did you do track, if you weren’t particularly good at it and didn’t particularly enjoy it?” Hannah once asked.

“So I could eat more cookies,” I told her truthfully, and maybe a smidge defensively I added, “It’s a reason. I was very passionate about cookies, okay?”

 

There’s no reason why I should have anything less than a perfect physique. No good reason, anyway. I can think of a plethora of lame reasons. I think of them all the time. You see, I wanted to exercise, but there were all these barriers standing in my way.

It’s too cold. It’s raining.

Looks like it might rain. Looks like it might get cold.

It’s too hot. It might get hot.

Too bright, too dark, too mosquitoey.

Never was it too dangerous. I’ve been fortunate to live in many wonderful, well-lit, well-patrolled towns through the years. Not that it stopped me from worrying about danger, though.

When all the stars aligned and I jogged, I did so at night. Ever-cautious, I never wore headphones and tried to remain alert to my surroundings. Inevitably, at the darkest points in the journey—usually when I was equidistant between two street lamps—a second shadow would creep up behind me. Fight-or-flight adrenaline would course through me as I prepared to whirl and confront (or more likely evade) my attacker.

It took an embarrassing number of times for this to happen before I realized I was casting both shadows.

Eventually  I realized it would probably be better for my heart health if I quit jogging altogether—if I kept spooking at my current rate, I’d give myself a heart-attack before I ever reaped any long-term benefits from this nightly endeavor.

Time passed. The scale’s report increased, the jeans-comfort decreased, and I signed up for a gym membership, effectively eliminating all the aforementioned barriers.

So I had to think of new ones.

It was too early. It was too late.

I was too tired. I was too busy.

It was too crowded. It was too empty.

It was too expensive.

Yes! Especially now that we are a single income family. Yup, too expensive.

I called to cancel our membership because of my highly legitimate excuse reason.

I called late at night so I could leave a message. Assertiveness isn’t really my strong suit.

The owner called me back the following morning.

He was very understanding of my situation.

Phew! I was off the hook.

He realized that $60 per month was a scary sum when experimenting with being a single-income family, because—guess what?—his wife was just starting her journey as a stay-at-home mom, too.

He completely understood, and would terminate our contract (and auto-drafts) right away. Unless…

Unless?

Unless we really wanted to get physically fit, because he sure didn’t want to take away our opportunity for good health.

Oh brother. Here we go.

Sixty dollars is a scary sum.  What about $15 per person, hmm-let’s-see, that’s $30 per month.  The cost of a date-night dinner for a month’s worth of access to all this fitness equipment and these classes...

Crud. This was not how the conversation was supposed to go.

It did seem noble. All of it—his benevolent offer, my decision to sacrifice a date-night dinner…

So, I agreed to continue our membership. I even came up with this stupid plan to do 5K a day during the week for the month of April, just so that I would force myself to test out the gym membership at this new reduced rate. It was the least I could do, seeing as how I value health so much.

And all that rot.

Yesterday marked the seventh day of my dumb idea, and I did not want to go. I tried to psych myself up—Day seven! Wow! By the end of today, that’s 35k so far. (Expressing it in ‘k’ makes it seem like far more has been accomplished than expressing it in miles. Do you know how much 35k is in miles? Twenty-one[ish]. So, ‘k’ it is!)

My excuses were lining up, begging to be acknowledged. I don’t want to waste gas, and it’s too far to walk. Oh, I was stooping low for that one, I know.

I did everything I could to procrastinate. By noon, the house was spotless. I was contemplating taking a shower and getting ready for the day when the scale caught my eye. I’d done 30k so far this month. I wondered if I‘d lost any weight.

Stepping confidently onto the scale, I looked down and saw that I had GAINED four pounds since this ridiculous fitness plan had begun.

BAM! Instant motivation!

I did not shuffle the scale and try again.

I did not undress and try again.

I did not use the restroom and try again.

Motivation had arrived, and I needed to leave for the gym right away!

On the treadmill fifteen minutes later—and not happy about it, either—I realized that thinking of lame reasons is a kind of exercise. A mental exercise. And if that’s true, my brain has a perfect physique.

Until something changes and I fall in love with working out, if I want to get fit, I’m going to have to follow Nike’s advice and just do it.

Ikea Art

“Why are you crying?”
“There’s so much, and it’s all so very beautiful… It’s so tragic… [sniffle, hiccup] We can’t have it all. How will we ever choose?”
“There, there… it will be okay. Are you at Ikea again?”

Every trip to Ikea is an emotional journey for me. It’s been this way from the very beginning of our relationship, Ikea and me. I used to go on these horrible and excessive benders—binging on purchases, hundreds of dollars worth, only to purge it all in the returns department in the days that followed when my sanity had returned and my guilt had all but consumed me.

Recovery has been a rocky road.

Itty bitty baby steps of self-discipline.

Phase 1: Lusting after the designer rooms and innovative organizational storage from the catalogue and safety of my own living room.

Phase 2: Spending a pre-determined amount of time wandering the upstairs showrooms, using my phone’s camera to capture all my favorite things, creating a little personal pinterest that I could look at whenever the next urge struck.

Phase 3: Bringing the children. That one was probably the most effective, since they suck the intimacy right out of most situations with the constant jabbering, question-asking, and whining. Most effective, but NOT the most fun.

Phase 4: Sticking to the list. This is the phase I’m currently in, and things have been pretty stable. There’s only one thing that can thwart it:

The art section.

How can I adequately describe my romance with the art section of Ikea? My heart rate increases just thinking about it.

A love-hate tide swells inside me the instant I arrive and evaluate my surroundings, and the excessive-compulsive battle begins. There’s so much, and it’s all so very beautiful. There are the enormous wall-covering canvases and the post-card-sized five-packs of quirky images and the many medium-sized things in between. And the frames! And the lovely relatively new addition of wall decals!

I used to employ a special recovery technique to resist the wiles of that seductive art section.

Bonus Phase: Conjuring great disdain for the travesty of commercially mass-produced artwork. Probably EVERYBODY has this poster/canvas/adorable sculpture now, so it’s not like it’s unique anyway. Why would you want to be like everyone else? Why would you want your living room to look like everyone else’s?

Alas, I couldn’t really sustain that one, no matter how hard I tried. It’s one of the few times that I haven’t been able to successfully lie to myself.

So tragic.

So very, very tragic.

Choosing is incredibly difficult, but I know I must use self-discipline. I limit myself to just one thing.

I usually end up getting at least three.

That’s just the way it is with Ikea art.

H-O-W-W-W-D-Y, P-A-A-A-R-D-N-E-R

When I was little, I loved the book Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport. Even though the book’s theme was supposed to showcase the fallacy of preconceived notions and stereotypes, I must have tuned that out, focusing instead on The West and all its rumored glory.

Even though I was a college student when I first-ever stepped on Texas soil, part of me really did expect cacti and cowboys, ten-gallon hats and armadillos at every turn.

“Dad! Watch out for that armadillo!” I’d shrieked, as we departed from the airport on my maiden voyage toward Denton and the rest of my life.
“That’s a squirrel, Court,” he’d said, in the tonal equivalent of an eye-roll.

Turns out Gila Monsters was pretty spot-on. Texas looked not so very different from Connecticut. Except for the lack of trees and the hills, I suppose. These account for the enormity of the sky, which at first was little overwhelming. I quickly came to appreciate this, though. Storms do not sneak up on you in Texas—you can see them coming well in advance.

The biggest difference I noticed—which still holds true today—is the overall friendliness of the people here. There are nice people everywhere, I know. Jerks, too, if we’re being honest. But in my experience in these last fourteen years, it is the kindness I’ve always appreciated most.

I used to wonder if the warmth of the climate had an impact on the warmth of the culture and community. In Connecticut, so many months of the year are spent bundling up in layers to insulate ourselves from the cold. Do we not also insulate ourselves from one another as we hurry about our day’s business?

With this year’s new opportunity to be out and about during the work-day hours, I’ve been blessed to see (and appreciate!) even more kindness in action in unanticipated capacities and locations.

Several times when cutting it close to pick-up time at school, I’ve been surprised by the intuitive response from the cashiers at the supermarket. I’d already unloaded the cart onto the conveyor belt before realizing that I was now in queue behind a slowpoke. I don’t think my panic had reached my expression yet, but in an instant, another cashier was at my elbow, gathering my items and bringing them over to his lane. I was out of there in less than three minutes. Another time—same supermarket, same situation, different slowpoke ahead of me at checkout—the customer service lady subtly came over to the conveyor belt with her laser-booper and started to scan in my items (and bag them) from my side of the register, returning to her own workstation to finish out the transaction. It was so cool.

You know, I really have seen quite a few armadillos (REAL ONES) through the years, but I’ve seen even more demonstrations of kindness and friendliness.

And I haven’t seen one single gila monster yet.

Groupon thinks I'm a bimbo.

Okay, perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Diva, then.

My inbox is flooded with Groupon’s daily custom deals: acrylic nails, hot stone massages, lash extensions, microderm-abrasions…

What on earth did I click when I established the parameters for their personalized promotions?

Eyebrow threading? I’ll admit-- this one was intriguing. Do they sew in supplementary foliage for those of us who are naturally deficient? Alas, no. It appears that this procedure involves somehow tying floss around eyebrow hairs and then YANKING them out. In public! Embarrassment aside, it sounds both painful and time consuming.

Tanning packages? Another confession here, I’m afraid. There was a time in my life when I tanned regularly, and that time was fifteen years ago. There was a time when I tanned sporadically, and that time was ten years ago—in January, and for two weeks only. I’d been super-stressed, and there’s something very comforting about spending time daily in a warm, light place where literally the only thing one could do was lie still for a solid twenty minutes. The joy of recreational and/or intentional tanning was killed the day I learned that a tan is the skin’s response to injury. You know, like bruises. Mother’s theory of brown fat being more attractive than pale fat be damned, I was done with UV rays forever.

(“Do they not have sunshine where you come from?” Russ had asked when we’d first become intimately acquainted.)

Spray-tan packages? Oh, Groupon, Groupon, Groupon. Do you not know me at all? WHY would I sign on to pay $19 for a spray tan session when I can (and recently DID) purchase my own tan-in-a-can. Did you really think that I would embrace a public venue for such a private sindulgence? For shame.

[Side note—Moist Hemp’s 'Bronzing Moisturizer' and Body Drench’s 'Quick Tan Bronzing Spray' ($5.99 and $19.99 at Sally Beauty, respectively) have been wonderfully effective this season.]

Groupon, you are going to have to do better if you expect to keep my business. (Or perhaps—Self, you are going to have to establish your preferences better if you want to keep scoring great Groupon deals!) Ever thought of having a discount on regular sunscreen? I’d buy it in a heartbeat!

Take note, Sun. I'm armed and ready for battle.