<p>I’ll have to try Weezer. </p>
<p>My instant respectability escape is The Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ Give It Away.</p>
<p>Eminem. I’m sorry Mama, I never meant to hurt you, but tonight, I’m cleaning out the closet…</p>
<p>Destiniy’s Child - I need a soldier, someone who can stand up and fight…</p>
<p>Really too many to mention.</p>
<p>Ahhhhh ice cold Limoncello. I have had a heck of a week.</p>
<p>My Son (the “bright” one?!) announced a few days ago that he couldn’t participate in basketball practice because his “arm hurt.” After a Q&A I discovered it had been hurting for over two weeks, in fact I later dicovered that both his siblings knew the whole time but had been instructed not to tell mom! Why? Because he hurt it while skateboarding some forbidden way or location (I don’t remember or even care) and did not want to tip me off.</p>
<p>Of course it was broken, and it had been healing wrong to boot. Doctor said he’d have to go get it re-set. When doc left the room, I shook my head and said, well, S, you are really a S***head! </p>
<p>Luckily he knows my sense of humor and we both laughed.</p>
<p>How about having a broken arm for two weeks, untreated? Upshot: Gen anesthesia, arm wrenched back into position, big hunking cast, vicodin, can’t take a shower unassisted. </p>
<p>Suffice it to say, lesson learned about not telling mom about an injury due to embarrassment/imagined grounding.</p>
<p>Anyway, cheers to all of you and cheers to these kids who keep thinking of new ways to make us nuts.</p>
<p>SBmom, here’s a nice cold glass of French limonade. Wow!</p>
<p>SBMom, that is hysterical. It reminds me of my best friend’s daughter. They are a family of athletes, with v. high pain thresholds. One day her daughter said to her, “Mom, I can’t close my lunchbox. My arm kind of hurts.” Turned out the arm was broken…</p>
<p>I always say there are things you never thought you would have to tell your kids. “Tell your parents if you break your arm.” That would be one. My son when he was four once took a pair of scissors and right in front of me snipped his lip on purpose. Luckily it was just a cut. I asked him why on earth he had done that. He said he just wanted to see what happened. Never thought I would have to tell him, “Do not cut your lip with scissors.”</p>
<p>o.k. I am giving up my keyboard and my home for 6 weeks and taking the long flight to the west coast. I will read all summer and visit the local library to check my email. Maybe I can check in to see how y’all are doing from time to time. It’s hotting up here so time to visit the Bay Area and cool summertime. For all of you looking forward to senior year…my best!</p>
<p>Overseas, Alu, thanks for the support. </p>
<p>The lip cutting story is hilarious. My mom tells the story that when she was about that age: the lights went out while she was doing cut & paste art-- and when they went back on her mother discovered that my mom had cut her eyebrows off. </p>
<p>I mean, it takes a four year old to come up with this sort of idea!</p>
<p>My kids must all have high pain thresholds, because each one of them has broken a bone that has not gotten immediate treatment due to the kid finding the pain tolerable. It is a weird habit at my house. (However, the other two kids at least immediately notified parents of the injuries!) D broke wrist in Kindergarten; youngest S broke elbow in 1st grade. Both acted fine and weren’t treated for about 3 days until Mom said-- since it’s not getting better fast enough we’re getting it checked.</p>
<p>overseas, have a great trip!!</p>
<p>overseas , have a safe journey. Summer is breathing down our necks ,too. The ranch barely escaped an extremely scary 1000 acre grass fire Thursday. It came within 300 yards of getting onto the ranch.:eek: Had it made it across the road, everything I own would have been bar-b-que. Around here it is like a tinderbox. Wait-everything on CC is like a tinderbox ,too. Coincidence? I think not. LOL.</p>
<p>Oh, and some friends of mine and I were jumping off the roofs of houses for height and distance studies when we were between 7th and 8th grade (my research project for the summer, unpublished but thorough) . The seventh grade is a particularly intelligent year for boys.
Upon returning home, I ate dinner then pedalled back to my friend’s house a mile away. Pedalled to the movies two miles away. Pedalled home. Woke up the next morning with an ankle the size of a crimson sweet watermelon (the round striped ones). Sure enough-broken clear across.</p>
<p>overseas – you’ll be in the Bay Area? Let me know, maybe we can do coffee or lunch or something!</p>
<p>Neither my oldest nor I have ever broken anything but my youngest D recieved a greenstick fracture on her wrist when she was running around the yard and crashed into someone.
We put ice on it- but as soon as the ice came off it began swelling quite a bit so we took her in to get it set.
She didn’t like the cast it itched and when no one was looking she would rotate her arm in it to work it around.
The day she was due to get her cast off, I peeked in her room and was shocked to see that the cast had come off at some point ( she was in bed) because the nursing staff had already acted suspicious when she broke her wrist I was not about to call them up and cancel the appt. so Ihad her put the cast back on and took her in.</p>
<p>Of course this is the girl that just last month removed her orthodonic braces herself on the way back to school after her appt. ( Ididn’t see her until that evening and since we had paid extra for clear top braces I wasn’t too surpised when I couldn’t see them-
“wow” I can hardly see your braces! “um…well…”</p>
<p>Contrast the high pain threshold family to my daughter. She has broken her collarbone twice. Each time I could tell because she actually, no kidding, went into mild shock. Then got a fever! No high pain threshold here.</p>
<p>EK4 your D sounds incredibly resourceful. The motto in my house is, “Why do it yourself if you can get a grownup to do it?” Except, of course, for snipping your upper lip with scissors.</p>
<p>And 'mudge, whew on your close call. Wildfires are so terrifying. Of course, it does add to the legend…</p>
<p>Alu, I guess I can send you guys the 34 out of 40 vicodin we have left ;)</p>
<p>SBMom, LOL. Don’t tempt me.</p>
<p>resourceful isn’t really the word I would use- although she is determined enough that I could see her as being on of those mountain climbers that will cut off their arm if they have to.
I don’t know what it is with kids and collarbones
one niece broke her collarbone twice and she was not an active kid. I would go visit and forget it was broken , and I put my hands under her armpits to swing her up onto something 
oww!</p>
<p>S#2 broke his collarbone twice as a kid, too. Once rolling off my bed and once “dancing the high angle in math dancing, Mom”. </p>
<p>I never did figure that one out.</p>
<p>Our son broke his ankle during wrestling practice his Freshman year. It was a double leg take down gone wrong…ick! He was on crutches for what seemed like forever and was out for the season. When his sophomore year rolled around and wrestling season started he choose not to wrestle. In the past he knew he could be hurt but he didn’t realize that he could “get broken.” Needless to say no more wrestling.</p>
<p>The “good” part of the story though is this… I received a call on my cell phone on my way to pick up S at practice. It was the coach telling me that he had been hurt and recommending that I take him to the emergency room. When I arrived at the gym my S was seated on the floor with a bag of ice on his very swollen ankle. The coaching staff helped me put him in the car and we headed for the emergency room. I called Doddsdad to let him know what was going on. He assured me that I was wasting my time taking him to the emergency room, that it was nothing more than a sprain. I got rather indignant and assured him a trip to the emergency room WAS warranted. Once in the emergency room they sent us to X ray. The X rays clearly showed the break and a temporary cast was put on. I was right and had not overreacted, which is exactly what Doddsdad figured I had done.</p>
<p>This senario sound familiar to any of you out there…dad espouses the “stiff upper lip, its only a sprain, walk it off” philosophy and mom, reacts stongly and with purpose (it sounds much nicer than overreacting)?</p>
<p>I also broke my collar bone as a kid. I was running down hill with my hands in my pockets and I tripped-- I fell sort of on my chest, with nothing to break the fall. It hurt terribly AND I could not swim for the rest of that summer due to the figure-8 like brace I wore.</p>
<p>Aloha! We are back from Paradise (the Big Island). I highly recommend leaving your keikis (kids) at home and going to Paradise to find your own Aloha. Mai Tais with fresh wedges of pineapple and swizzle sticks shaped like dolphins – for everyone (21 & over).</p>
<p>Highlights: Flew over Pu’u O’o Vent in a helicopter and looked right down into the crater. Saw red, flowing lava. Witnessed the creation of new Earth. Took a pic of Dh standing on land that is younger than he is. </p>
<p>Watched the sunset from the summit of Mauna Kea. Want to slow down? Go to the top of Mauna Kea, and your body will force you to slow down by 40 percent. With 40 percent less oxygen, the sluggleggs had a hard time getting out of the Mauna Kea porta-potty, which is saying a lot, because I’ve had years of experience in and around outhouses. Maybe it was the 13,792 ft elevation, or the sight of the mighty telescopes turning toward the horizon, or the enchanting Hawaiian singers at dusk, but the experience brought tears to my eyes. The sunset, that is. The porta-potty was alright. </p>
<p>So, here’s the story: The ancient Hawaiians considered Mauna Kea (White Mountain) the home of Poli’auh, the snow goddess. She and Madame Pele, who lived next door on Mauna Loa (Long Mountain), didn’t get along very well, and the “saddle” (aka the road) between the two mountains was said to be their battleground. Dh claims he lost one of his kidneys on the ride back down the saddle.</p>
<p>We saw one of the rarest plants in the world (looks like a big, silver onion flower from TGI Fridays), and ho-hum, we saw the Southern Cross, which I’ve never seen because we don’t live in the Southern hemisphere, and yawn, we looked into the center of the Universe. No, really…apparently, we’re somewhere on an arm of the Milky Way, so I guess, we looked right into the Milky Way’s armpit. </p>
<p>Our guide, a former surfer dude from Half Moon Bay, provided us with mac nut cookies and hot chocolate. Even though it was PITCH BLACK, and we had to travel in a huddle to feel our way to the bathroom, I’m pretty sure that the cookies were choc chip.</p>
<p>And, finally, we conversed with dolphins every morning after breakfast. They were just swimming around in their lagoon, and they’d push themselves up on the sand, pop their heads out of the water, look right at us, and go, “Eeey-eeey-yee,” in dolphin speak. This was way before our Mai Tai hour. After Mai Tai hour, we conversed with geckos, Nenes, and the occasional coconut we’d find on the beach and make into a head with coconut hair.</p>
<p>Aloha!</p>
<p>P.S. Couldn’t pronounce anything, in English or Hawaiian, by the time we left the island. By the second day, Dh was giving me stink eye over my driving directions. You try pronouncing Pu’uhonua o Honaunau as fast as you can while driving past the sign, or try to say 'Anaeho’omalu Beach without sounding like you have a mouth full of rocks.</p>
<p>We came home and found ds’s SAT II scores in the mail. He’s officially done with testing! He was not that overjoyed when we told him that (thank the Lord) he actually has a shot at getting into the University of Hawaii at Hilo. We couldn’t wipe the smiles off of our faces when we were informing him of this wonderful news. Five hours away across the Pacific Ocean at a university where students don’t worry about doing homework! Yipee! :D</p>
<p>so slugg I must have missed it- was this a vacation or a college trip disguised as a vacation?
I am asking cause my D is interested in studying in Hawaii- she is really a mid size LAC type I think- but she loves Hawaii and wants to study marine bio .
anyway sounds like you had a great time- good for you :)</p>