The Creek House is no longer on the market. Maybe we’ll get the scoop on that from our agent when she gets back in town. I suppose not that it probably really matters. There’s a couple other houses that I guess we should go look at. I’m so completely over this whole house for sale thing.
So… the thing with relaxation… I’ve been pretty wound tight for the last I don’t know how many years. I relax and all I can do is realize how tired I am… I slept a lot of today. Now I’m hennaing my hair.
This morning we got another call, three realtors brought clients by today, this morning. We vacated and went to Barnes and Nobles to browse for books and things. On our way, my dad called & said their house sold. He wasn’t happy about what it sold for, but… it sold! In a market that makes the one we’re in look really, really good. Actually the inspection is tomorrow and closing is on June 16th. I’ll feel better about saying their house is sold when it’s through inspections… and then through final closing… but, it’s more than we’ve gotten so far. I’m happy for them though — that means they’ll be up in Seattle & a little closer to their grandkids who adore them. And the house that my Dad has wanted to live in I think probably since he left it as a young man.
Anyway, back to B&N… Their linguistics & philosophy sections are sadly understocked. I did find an entertaining looking linguistics book though — Far From the Maddening Gerund: and other dispatches from Language Log. Not quite what I was looking for, but it will do betwixt the other three or so books I’m paging through.
M2 found a book on fairies that’s so sweetly drawn & pretty much perfect for her age when we’re not doing the ABC thing. M1 had a gift certificate from her birthday? Christmas? She got The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, & Little House in the Big Woods. I think she’s half way through The Secret Garden already. She’s thanked me several times for recommending it to her. Sweet girl. Then we bought lunch and ended our adventure.
Then we came home & I napped most of the afternoon. All I wanted to do was lie down. Though I did get sourdough pizza crust (and pizza!) made. Artichoke heart & goat cheese was one of them, pineapple was the other. OM NOM NOM NOM. After dinner, the girls and I read, two chapters out of the Cat Who book that M1 & I are working through, and two chapters of the fairy book we got today for M2. They both crashed out, and… my hair is hennaing, the Mariners are bombing, and TimTheCat is curled up next to me. I think I’ll sleep well again tonight despite all the napping this afternoon.
That was very lovely with lovely company too.
I don’t really do much girl-y stuff. Tonight I ventured into new and exciting territories. I went to the Korean spa that’s not far from where I live in lieu of being able to go to LRC this weekend. So much with the lovely!
So my adventure began with M2 following me tearfully around the house telling me how much she was going to miss me. The bedtime reading ritual has been a Big Deal in our house lately. M2 is… well, she’s recognizing letters & has huge swaths of Dr. Seuss memorized & recognizes the word “is”. She has also learned to really work the cute to get what she wants. As I was walking out the door, she looks at me with big, puppy dog, tear-y hazel-y green eyes & says mournfully, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mommy.” Heh. That’s right, little monkey girl!
I showed up & they gave me my lovely little robe & funny little hat & towel stuff, the Very Tallest Box to put my shoes in & had someone show me where things were. She showed me where the tea room was [note to self, pay $4 extra for unlimited tea tag next time], where the scrubby things took place, and the [mani-/pedi-]cure things and the face things and the stuff & stuff, and the hot rooms (more about these shortly) and the pools and showers & stuff. So I was all kind of oriented and she showed me where my locker was and deserted me.
These people have done this before. It was so organized, it made my library/information science heart sing. I had box 9 for my shoes, a little bracelet with key that said “9″, and my locker was locker #9, and there were little boxes in by the showers & pools where I would have had my own little box 9 for my towels, and everything! If I’d known about the tea tag for unlimited tea, my tea tag would have been also… Number 9!
So I got into my soft cotton robe & funny little hat. The bathrobe reminded me of the one my mommy brought back for me from the Japanese bathhouses. I wore holes in it, it was so comfy. The funny little hat was actually shockingly comfy & comforting. I ventured forth in my new fancy stylish outfit & peeked in all the hot rooms looking for a familiar face. Not seeing any, I paced and eventually settled on sitting in the “reception” area with an Architectural Digest which I couldn’t read because I left my glasses in my #9 locker, but the pictures were pretty. Before not long at all J came along freshly scrubbed & then promptly S & L came along. Hoorah, lovely & fun company (and such *charming* outfits!).
It was then decided that it was Time For The Hot Rooms. We went into the 150F “charcoal room” first. Yes. I know. I like my beef rarer than that. I was really concerned that it was not going to be my thing, but it’s so very lovely. There was charcoal on the wall (very pretty!) and charcoal under the mats. Did I mention it was hot? It’s really hot. For the first time in… years? my monkey brain just shut up. Of course, all you can do in a room that hot is sit or lie down and go, “Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh” as you melt into puddles.
After the charcoal room, there was a 140F salt room. Maybe I’m mixing up temps. There was salt under a canvas floor covering. That room was very lovely too. From there we went into the 75F room — yes. That’s a temperature difference of 65F. We all started giggling when we realized the “log cabin” styled walls had skis hanging from them and a winter-y “scene” outside a faux window. We did not venture into the “chill” room (60F). There was also a room that was 170F. There’s a five minute limit on staying in that one. I didn’t go in there. I will try it next time when I’ve brought my water bottle in with me. Maybe. It was really hot. So I went back in the charcoal room for a bit, then came out and sat in the reception area again on the comfy couches. Then J & I went and sat in the tea room. She let me steal sips of her tea and we talked of things & stuff and then it was time for her to go walk the dogs. She ran and took a quick shower & I’m going to go bathe very shortly here. Then we walked out to our cars. It was so wonderfully lovely. I might even be inclined to go back there all by my lonesome at some point. I didn’t get to the pools or the steam rooms this time at all. This must be rectified.
But it is bath time now. Silly people are coming to tromp through our little house tomorrow morning & that means I don’t get to sleep in. It is good to go take bath. It is sleepy-times now. Before the monkey brain comes back.
Yep. M2 kept saying her neck was sore. And she started holding her shoulders funny to protect her neck. And then she got a headache. I took her to the emergency room because… stiff neck, headache, high temperature (well, it was 100 this afternoon which isn’t as bad as the 102-103 we were seeing, but those were recent enough to keep those neural panic pathways well lit), and since meningitis isn’t something you mess around with…
It’s not meningitis, but they said they were Very Glad I brought her in because, like I said above, high temp, headache, stiff neck… They gave her some ibuprofen & TWO grape popsicles. I Cannot Wait to find out how much an ER popsicle costs.
Apparently what happened was this, the glands in her little neck were so swollen that it made the side of her neck sore. She was scrunching her shoulders up funny to protect the side of her neck causing the back of the neck where the shoulder muscles attach to spasm, that in turn was causing a headache.
I can please has weekend now?
This has been quite a weekend. Suspenseful in not quite the way I had hoped for, for sure. There’s been something in the air the last few days since Thursday that have caused my “PANIC!” neural pathways to light up and every little thing that happens that is minor cause of concern just keeps hitting those pathways & causing them to light up. Of course, the more frequently that pathway is traveled, the faster & easier everything lights up…
On Friday, my monthly stuff was doing things peculiar enough to make me wonder if the dreaded hadn’t happened. Logically I could figure out that it was highly unlikely, but I couldn’t convince the worry center in my brain to STFU. So I did the obvious thing and bought a test on my way in to work & checked. People — I am not pregnant. Whew. The rest of the day was kind of wacky in similar ways at work. Potential cause to be concerned, PANIC, potential cause to be concerned relieved (or mostly alleviated).
M2 busted out in something somewhat akin to strep throat yesterday. The doctor was shocked when the test came back negative, but said sometimes the five minute test threw a false negative. I asked about doing the 24 hour test & she said, “I would normally go ahead & treat it as strep. I really don’t like giving unnecessary antibiotics to children though” (she says all this as she’s writing up a prescription). Then she turns around and looks at me & says, “you can use the prescription or not, (glancing at M2) let’s do the 24 hour test on her.” By that point, 4:30 in the afternoon, M2 hadn’t had tylenol since 8:30 in the morning. It had long worn off, she had an armpit temp of 102, and was a really sad, miserable, tired, little camper. She went on to say it was ok to watch & wait & if she got sicker we could use the antibiotics & if not we could just hold off. Sicker? No — I don’t ever want to see either of my kids looking sicker than M2 did at that moment. So, the sweet nurse that did the swab test the first time came back in. M2 freaked out, crying, wailing, refused to cooperate. She would NOT open her mouth & nothing I could do would make her. I figured, I have the prescription in hand, the doctor was actually shocked that it wasn’t strep so I’m guessing the odds that it was a false negative were actually pretty high, we have permission to treat or not treat as we see fit… why traumatize the kid further? It’s not like we’re chronic antibiotic abusers — this is only the second time either kid has ever had antibiotics in their lives and it just happens to be M2 that’s had them twice now… As long as it’s not meningitis or something. When she gets strep, it causes all the glands in her neck to swell up so much and the fever makes her muscles ache & then she starts talking about her neck hurting (stiff neck! meningitis! Oh my god! medical emergency! Aaaaaghgghhghghghghgh!).
That said, sick kid means we had to cancel plans with my dad to watch the girls today — no point in exposing more people to the gunk & medicine taking and the like. As P says, something always thwarts us — “we’ll have ‘us’ time when they’re both in college or we’re retired or whatever…” Meh.
I tried last night to shift the panic mode over to my fish, the betta’s tail is being fussy. I don’t really want to do partial water changes twice a week, but my suspicion is that if anything that’s the cause of the tail funk because the rasboras are just not nippy critters. Tanks are funny little organic things as they go through their closed system changes over time.
I went to bed early last night, got a good night’s sleep & am hoping for a very laid back quiet peaceful day today. < crossing fingers >
Time to go help clean…
M1 & I spent two hours reading the Cat Who Talked to Ghosts to each other tonight. I made her read me a chapter while I put the bread together, then I read her… two? three? chapters. We’re getting to the good part where all the clues start coming together & the drama is building & everything gets *very* exciting. There’s only three chapters left in the book — that’s the point we’re at. Then M2 made me read Dr Seuss’s ABCs, The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, The Stuff on My Cat ABCs, Nikki McClure’s Awake to Nap (a much beloved gift from jainabee for Chinese New Year). Whew. Now they’re in bed & I’m waiting for the bread to rise & the oven to warm.
I got the tomatoes planted today. In the ground. Sigh. And the marigolds. I dug up the star lilies that were coming up & potted them so we can, if we ever move, take them with us. One bulb broke off deep, so either we’ll have one left out there next year or whoever buys the house will have a pleasant surprise. Last weekend was a baking weekend. This week was a planting weekend. With a little baking thrown in for good measure. We are, apparently, out of bread so I made some. :)
I did some yoga for the first time since I was sick. Lots of tension and peculiar points of resistance. Or maybe not so peculiar, but noted and all that. As I was coming out of savasana a realtor called and wanted to come over — “how does now sound?” P begged 10 minutes. All the beds were unmade, our sheets were being washed, the kids’ stuff scattered everywhere. We made a mad dash to get everything cleaned up & were walking out the side door as they drove up. I hate this routine. I hate it hate it hate it. The kids were over at the neighbor’s playing & knew a realtor was at our house, so P & I took a walk around the block. They were still here, so we crossed the house & went to look at the creek a block from our house. Some time since last fall, it had done a wild sinkhole thing nearly up to the main thoroughfare street. The creek had been sent through a big cement pipe under the street, and… I don’t know — the pipe or tunnel or whatever must not have held. Before we moved in, there’d been a sinkhole that took out, sweartagod, part of a gas station. But this was new damage and it was much bigger than before. I wish I’d taken my camera, but I didn’t. The creek that runs through the far back of the backyard at the Creek House is a small finger stream off the main creek, it’s not The Main Creek, not by a long shot. I’d have substantial reservations if it were The Main Creek. Concerns & reservations are all a moot point though until we know if this one is getting sold.
I can hear M1 snoring in the other room. Heh.
This morning… it seems like I did something, but it is terribly far away & I can’t remember what it is. Then P came and got me & said, “I have something you can do if you’re looking for something to do!” — which I wasn’t, but eh. He took me ’round back & pointed at our honeysuckle plant. It lives on a trellis. Because it’s spring time, it’s starting to get unruly. With last weekend’s snow, the weight of the plant & the snow on the trellis, had pulled it partway over. I started in on a spring trim & decided to just hack it all back to wood. Honeysuckle is ridiculously hardy & it’ll come back easy-peasy & it won’t pull the trellis over. Then we wandered over to the camellia bush. Did a little clean up on it & P started in on the raspberries and we quickly realized we needed some yard waste bags having totally filled the yard waste bin with grass clippings & honeysuckle (frankly, I’m amazed the honeysuckle all fit in there — I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to).
I came in to fix the girls lunch. Sat down from the morning’s work & P comes trotting in & asks if I want to go to the garden store. Um, duh! So we piled the entire family in the car and drove off to the garden store. And we couldn’t just get yard waste bags! Nooo! Mama picked up black pansies, basil, Italian parsley, mint… maybe a few other things. The girls picked out many multi-colored pansies, and watched the big koi in the fish pond, and gleefully ambled down all the little rock paths & asked if we could by that? That? That? How ’bout that? P picked out tomatoes, marigolds, hefted heavy bags of potting soil for mama, and was very patient while all his girls ran amok.
Then we came home & potted many plants but still didn’t quite get through all of them. I thought I was going to have pots big enough to pot tomatoes in, but nooooo… I don’t really want to plant them in the ground, because what if the house sells? On the other hand, if the house sells… I guess we could buy some more. And if not then… damn. At least we’ll have home grown tomatoes, which are, increasingly, the only kind worth eating.
Then we had a tasty grilled salmon & fancy potatoes for dinner, the girls got tossed in the tub while I cleaned the fish tanks, & here we are watching Dirty Jobs. Seems to have been a pretty good day.
My little fairy says, “There are shortcuts to happiness. Dancing is one of them.”
I have a dental appt today in the Very Near Future & I just *totally* burnt the roof of my mouth on hot cheese. Awesome.
Before I got sidetracked on other things. I did a lot of baking yesterday. Two loaves of challah, a dozen rolls, apple pie, apple crisp with the left-over apples. I also made a black-bean quinoa salad thingy & then for dinner stuffed potatoes. By the time the potatoes were ready for dinner, I wasn’t hungry at all.
I got some pictures of my pretty too.
It was a very good weekend indeed. Am so very tired now though.
Patrick Lambe of Green Chameleon linked on his blog to my post about the whole Popline thing. ZOMG! If I were the ZOMG-run-around-the-house-fanning-my-face type, I’d totally be doing that. In fact, perhaps I will go do that for a bit. Then I suppose I should read his book since I got it for my birthday & it sounds like he addresses some stuff in it that will support what I’ve been saying for a couple years & I’ll probably get to learn even more which is a super bonus!
ZOMG! < runs around the house fanning my my face >< settles down momentarily >
Of course, he points out what I left palely implied rather than said directly, which is that this is why taxonomy governance is very, very important & the implications of structure & restructure can have far reaching affects & need to be considered in the process of re/structuring & developing taxonomies. I tend to push for more than one taxonomist to work on a project, just because we do bring our own biases to the table, but no one ever wants to pay for that. Meh to them. I will continue to push for it because I think it’s a really important point.
I saw a taxonomy yesterday that illustrates why these things need to be thought out… it was for a Christian organization & had a bunch of top level terms, among them “Programs”, “Products’, “Human Rights” & “Human Wrongs”, etc. Trying to recall this correctly, they had things like genocide under “human rights” & genital mutilation under “human wrongs”… Wha? I don’t necessarily consider a morality-based taxonomy necessarily wrong — taxonomy by it’s nature reflects a world/domain view. I do consider wrong arbitrary categorizations that are so murky that one would find genocide under human rights & genital mutilation under human wrongs. That’s just… it’s stupid. Someone thought they were being cute & clever & they’re so not. Then again, this is the same organization whose adopt-a-child uses the shopping basket metaphor. Pick a kid, put it in the basket, get some accessories. It’s just like a doll. Or, y’know, human slavery, speaking of human wrongs. I do believe we said, “Uh, not cool metaphor there” but they’re resisting, is the story coming back to me. Not my project though so I only get bits & pieces of it. The taxonomy containing human wrongs is an internal taxonomy used for tagging then directing content to a specific location, so it’s not displayed externally anywhere, but still. One of the things we think about both in “taxonomy” and information architecture/user experience is the story of the perspective/world view the organization of information is telling. I really think these people should take a good look at the stories they’re telling. Not just but especially because of their morality-based views.
In other work-related news, I think I’ve settled on a personal definition for ontology. There’s the formal definition of these things (which no one can agree on) & then there’s how everyone uses them. I’ve seen taxonomy used for a huge range of things & I’ve seen ontology used just as broadly. The general public doesn’t get as much exposure to the concept of thesaurus except as “that book with synonyms & antonyms that sits next to the dictionary” so I just don’t hear it used very often, except correctly. So ontology. I’ve been sitting in on ontology tool reviews for work in the last couple weeks. What I’m gathering from what I’m going to consider formal ontology tools (TopQuadrant’s TopBraid, Ontology Works, Protégé, Swoop, & the like) is that in addition to just the semantic relationships with named edges that a complex thesaurus can support, there’s a whole ‘nother layer of logic & inference that can be applied on top of the ontology that isn’t generally available in a thesaurus tool. So, I can call out in a complex thesaurus an “Bob’s yer uncle” associative relationship (Robert is your male or female parent’s brother), but I have to manually make that relationship, just like I’d have to make associative relationships to call out cousin relationships, etc. Very time consuming. In an ontology, I can write a rule or query that says, “[find * where] parent’s male sibling = uncle” and gather those inferences rather than having to explicitly call out those relationships. In addition, in a thesaurus, there’s a preferred term & then equivalent terms, authority control lists are good in that they can help diverse domains know what a preferred name (think legal or other authoritative/formal name) is, which works to varying degrees of success. In an ontology, there’s one concept which can be any number of data types, which can have associated term names associated with the concept, allowing more flexibility for multiple domains/systems to work together — as long as the concept is agreed on, they can pick the name they want to use, but it still ties into that central concept.
I know — so what. So, where this all comes into being very handy is for research, say, pharmaceutical research. Make a rule that goes across a series of drugs to find possible contraindications for use, or a query that finds possible new uses for drugs. The flexibility for complex querying of knowledge bases is an order of magnitude greater in ontologies than it is in thesauri & taxonomies. I don’t necessarily see the clients my company has using true ontology, but I have no doubt that some of them will come to us asking for “an ontology”, just like they come to us asking for “taxonomy” when they need a content audit. But it is good to be clear in one’s own head what each is, even if we smile & provide them with a complex thesaurus that has semantic relations/named edges.
I’m rambling — I’m not entirely clear on all this yet, but I think I’ve made great strides in the last week or so. Damn, I love what I do for a living. Taxonomy/Thesauri/Ontology is just about the best job ever. Anyway, I’m still sorting it out a little in my head & I logged on to write about the baking I did today… perhaps the baking is another post now though. :)