Oh Please Speak....

This morning I made the mistake of putting my foot down and insisting that Tolido at least TRY to say the word P O T T Y. "Pah' Tee" It was stupid on my part but I'm so tired of him not making progress where speech is concerned. I last posted about this mid-April. Since then we've had a grand total of THREE new words. Oh, come on, really?! Really. I can say, "Tolido, Please wash your hands, throw the wipe in the trash then go pick up the towels off the floor and take them to the laundry room and then clean up your playroom." He'll do it. I can ask him to stop playing, go upstairs, take off his clothes and get into the tub. He does it. He's not stupid. He understands every word. His vocabulary comprehension-wise is immense. But he SAYS little. He knows all his colors but will only say "blue." He says "Daddy" incessantly which is just about to drive both Daddy and Mommy completely nuts. He does a lot of pointing and says "eh" to show us what he wants. I think that for too long we have been naming things he points at with too little required in return. We talk to him. We read to him. We have now decided that he will get no more given to him without verbal work on his part. I've printed up 100 pretty flashcards with pictures of things he should be able to say. He will learn these. I will read books to him without pause until he begins to speak. I've taken his favorite toys out of the toy room and placed them along the edge of the bar. He can see them but can't reach them. We just explained to Tolido that he must tell Mommy what he wants, by name, if he wants to play with them. He is not happy. You should see the little glaring looks!! Tolido speech has, today, become my obsession. I shall flood his brain with words! :)

Memorial Day 2009

Freedom Isn't Free
~ Kelly Strong

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
and then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil?
How many mothers' tears?
How many pilots' planes shot down?
How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No, freedom isn't free.

I heard the sound of TAPS one night,
When everything was still
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That TAPS had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn't free.

On this Memorial Day we remember our troops of today and yesterday and their families who have given so much to our country and on her behalf. God bless you all. And thank you.

Mi Angelito

Such a wise and loving spirit behind the dark eyes of this little creature. It's so much fun that it's so easy to capture his cuteness. He's my Wingnut and I love him...

A Sticky Solenoid

I took many solo trips across the country in my car while in high school and college. It was an old diesel Mercedes. It was my dad's car before it was mine. He used to travel the country selling diamonds and other precious gems. He had many interesting friends - one of them quite good at booby trapping cars. When my dad drove it, the car was rigged. In 1980, before most cars came with alarms as standard equipment, this car had an alarm that could be remotely activated. Not only did a siren scream, the lights flashed, the steering wheel locked, and tear gas exploded from under the driver's seat. No shit. There was a wire in the trunk that, when pulled, would allow escape from the locked trunk should one ever find oneself in such a position. This was the only cool thing not disabled before I got the car. My brother and I learned to drive at the same time. I was 18 and he was 16. My dad decided we had to learn to drive a manual transmission before we were allowed to drive an automatic. In the course of learning, we blew out the clutch. Betcha didn't know it was possible to drive a manual without a clutch. Anyway, my dad picked up an engine jack and all the parts needed for a clutch replacement. He opened the do-it-yourself Mercedes 240D manual to the correct section and told us to let him know if we had any questions. He then walked into the house and sat down to read a book. We wanted to drive so we whined and cussed and sweated and skinned our knuckles and fixed the damned car. When we fired it up and it actually ran just like it should I fell in love with working on my own car. My brother, on the other hand, swore he'd find a way to make enough money he'd never ever work on a car again. So, a year later on summer vacation, I'm crossing the country at a bargain - sleeping in rest areas, showering in truck stops for $2.00 and enjoying the freedom of the open highway. I often had problems with the starter in the car - likely because I bought a series of refurbished starters. And the starter solenoid was constantly "sticky." To start the car normally, one had to turn the key to the on position and then pull out a handle on the dash to allow the dash-mounted glow plug to heat up. Once it was good and red you pulled the handle all the way out and the engine would turn over. When the solenoid was sticking, you had to precede all of this nonsense with beating on the solenoid housing. I used an 18" metal mag light for this purpose. In the middle of one of my trips, the problem became so bad that I had to have someone else beat on the solenoid while I did the whole glow plug magic in the car. So, I'm at a rest stop... I wake up and get ready to get on the road. In front of my car is a tractor trailer. I walk up to the side of the tractor and knock on the door. I ask the man inside if he'll help me start my car and hand him the flashlight. We get the car started and hang out talking for a few minutes. He's hauling bales of cotton. He showed them to me - they are enormous and wrapped around the middle with brown paper. The raw cotton is sticking out each end. He asks if I'd like to see the inside of his truck. Heck yeah. So we crawl up in the truck and it's pretty fascinating. We get out a map and show each other where we're from. He offers to let me drive his truck to the end of the rest stop. Thanks, but no. Anyway, finally I thank him for helping me, say goodbye and climb down out of the truck. I get in my car and head out. As I'm pulling away from a line of trucks, some guy flashes a handful of fanned out $20s at me. I drive away wondering about that. Twenty miles down the road, I finally figure it out. ;)

Tolido's "Pool"

Since it's only slightly cooler than the surface of the sun in TX in the summer, we got Tolido a "pool" to cool his toes.


From Tolido's perspective, it was a drinking fountain he could sit in...

Batface

Ken went off in search of more plants for our driveway circle. They have to be blazing sun tolerant and at least deer resistant. I'd personally prefer a plant that would send deer to the great pasture in the sky but that's another story... So he came home with a bunch of green things. As I was surveying his collection in the back of his truck, he reached into the middle and pulled out one which he proudly announced was a "batface." The lady at the nursery described it to Ken who immediately said, "I must have one of those!" Apparently the flowers are red and look like tiny bat faces. So we've been waiting for them to appear. Just now Ken walked into my office with a little red flower on the end of a tube and it looks just like a tiny bat face! See...

A White Girl!

My brother and I attended college on opposite sides of the country. In the winter of '92 a girlfriend and I drove from California to New York to visit. The trip out was wild. The Eastern half of the country was covered in a blinding snowstorm and, at times, we were the only car on the road with the 18 wheelers. In Tennessee we stopped at the first light we'd seen in hours to get something to eat. The news said interstates were being closed and driving should be limited to emergencies. We were in a bar/hotel/restaurant/truckstop and, as the hours passed, I began to feel that hanging out all night with a bunch of drunk, stranded truckers might not be wise. So we drove off into the snow and made it the rest of the way to NY without mishap. The visit was, of course, wonderful. The weather on the trip home was much nicer. At that time I was driving a 1970 Mercedes 240D. I knew a lot about working on my car - if I didn't keep it running, I had no wheels. Somewhere in the middle of New Mexico, I saw another '70s vintage Mercedes broken down on the opposite side of the interstate. Over howls of disbelief and protest from Christine, I slowed down, crossed the median and pulled up behind the other car. I got out to find two brothers and their sister waiting on mechanics from the closest town. Somehow two of the belts on their car had broken. Back then I was the queen of spare parts and happened to have the belts they needed. Just after we arrived, so did the mechanics with SAE tools. The Mercedes engine is completely metric. We sent them home. I donned my coveralls got out my tools and put the belts on the car. When I was done, we all shook hands and the sister said, "I can't wait to tell Momma a white girl fixed your car!" I grinned and wished them well and Christine and I headed back toward California.

Mmmmm... Pecan Pesto.

On a whim, because the neighbor was getting rid of a bunch of railroad ties, we decided to put in a raised garden. I went to the nursery, got more tomato plants, three types of squish (squash in my world - I think it sounds cooler), jalapeno, bell and Serrano pepper plants and cilantro and basil. Stuck 'em all in the dirt/compost and then it FINALLY rained in TX. The garden is flourishing. :) Yesterday I noticed the basil getting pretty tall so I chopped it off and turned it into pesto. 'Course I just sorta threw it all together but this is roughly the recipe.

4 cups fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup toasted pecans
2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

Toast the pecans by broiling them on a cookie sheet for about one minute. Watch them closely. You want them to be browned but not blackened. Combine the first four ingredients in a blender. Blend until paste forms. Add both cheese and salt. Blend until smooth. If the paste is too thick, add more olive oil. Toss pesto with pasta until lightly coated. Enjoy!;)