The Bicycle Vs. The Big Wheel and The Dog

The Little Kid was out riding her bike yesterday. She is real good at going fast, but not so good at using her brakes to stop. She usually comes to a rolling stop at the top of a hill.

This must be corrected.

Yesterday, she ran smack into our golden retriever, who, for some unknown reason, was not phased by a speeding bike approaching the side of her body. I checked for broken or cracked ribs (the dog) and patched up a few nicks and scratches (the kid) and we were off again

As she was riding along, some of the neighborhood kids took interest in riding. They were around 3 and 4ish. Their mom got out their big wheels and set them off. My little kid was on her way down the hill. Looking 12 seconds ahead, I could see an impending disaster

I got up and started walking toward her and asked her to watch out, cause kids were on thier way across the walk. She wasn’t sure what to do. Afterall, “the brakes don’t work” (especially when you don’t try to use them). So she ran into the back of the big wheel the 4-year-old was riding.

He fell forward onto the grass, while my daughter screamed bloody murder. She wasn’t that hurt… just surprised, really. The little boy was fine. Apologies were made to the mother as we scurried into the house for more patch and repair.

Dad is on point to “check the brakes” of the bike to ensure they are functional. I suppose we should have looked for a bike with handbrakes, but it didn’t really occur to us at the time.

Biking. It can be dangerous.

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

Summer Begins, Even if it IS 60 Degrees

According to the school calendar, summer begins today. It’s been an interesting year, as the parent of a first grader. The benefit of having a child in school, to me, is relearning everything myself. For example, did you know the Sun is really a nearby star made of mostly gas? I did, but it was interesting to hear it from my daughter, who spent the second half of the year falling in love with science.

Already, some of the math that comes home perplexes me. There is some kind of exercise they do, where a number goes in one spot, gets transitioned and comes out in another spot. Too many times, I just want to write the problem out the way I did it in school instead of messing with these “new” learning methods. Sometimes, I just feel old, in a “what is a pencil and paper?” sort of way.

Our goal to work on over the summer is reading, reading, and some more reading, mixed in with some math facts.

If you send your kids to school expecting the school to take care of every learning need, unless you’ve got an exceptionally Einstein kid, you’re in for some sad-looking report cards, in my opinion. In first grade, not only is the learning graded, but so are the social skills. Mine kept running like a crazy person down the hallway, according to teacher reports (stay in line and listen to instructions) and kept running into people in the classroom (be aware of your personal space and avoid running into others).

Apparently, no matter what, she is always in a hurry to get from Spot A to Spot B.

Kindergarten, it turns out, was a holiday compared to first grade. I’m looking forward to all of the wonderful things we’ll learn in second grade. Just please spare me the geometry. 🙂

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

The Park


I learned an important thing yesterday: Never try to hand-feed a swan. 🙂

My husband picked up a bit of bread and said, “I want to see if the swan will come to me”, then he dropped the bread at the last minute and the swan didn’t get his snack. So, I decided to pick up a piece of bread myself and handfeed it to the swan.

Umm, swans cannot apparently distinguish food from fingers, so he bit down ever-so-slightly on my fingers. Which made me laugh. And the other people who were standing there? They laughed, too.

a swan buskingThe swan was beautiful. We watched him chase a waterfowl very quickly across the lake. Anytime this bird got into the lake, the swan was off to chase it out.

UPDATE: Turns out that swans nest in March and April and become very territorial during nesting season. Also, for some reason, swans just don’t like ducks and geese.

The swan was doing something called “busking”(neck curved back and wings half raised), which makes it appear bigger than it really is (which was actually quite big anyway). Mute swans are close to 30 pounds (weight-wise to you UK dwellers) 🙂 and their wingspan can be up to 90 some-odd inches. Wow.

That voice you hear in the background is my little kid. 🙂

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

My week.

… started out with an MRI to determine whether or not I had a sort of cancer that runs in my family. I do not.

My husband got a job offer that he is entertaining… one he didn’t solicit. It’s interesting to see the difference between wanting to leave a place of employment and being enticed to leave. Decision is due Tuesday morning. So far, we are thinking of just tossing a coin. What the heck.

My last remaining grandparent died today. She has been in a nursing home for years. I remember good and bad things about my grandmother. She liked to sew and bake kolace and English pudding, she liked to sit on the swing in her yard and enjoy the outdoors. She made real applesauce (the kind with red hots) and harvested strawberries from the huge garden she and my grandfather shared.

My grandma was 93. She had alzheimers and heart problems. I hope she rests in peace.

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

I’m Not Abnormal

So says my radiologist, which is most excellent. I can’t even begin to express the amount of dread hanging over my head for the last week. I can look at my family again and not wonder if I’m going to dessert them early. Well, you know, there is the bus I could be hit by tomorrow, but at least I have no terrible, life-threatening disease to report.

I do have a funny story, though.

Yesterday, I picked my 6-year-old up from school. I told her that I had my big x-ray at the hospital. This is how that went:

Her: Did you have to get an x-ray because your heart stop beating?
Me: Ummm.. no…
Her: Because if your heart stops beating, then you would be dead. I don’t like you to be dead.
Me: No?
Her: No, because then my daddy would pick me up every day at school and I would keep asking him for snacks…
Me: And he would say, “No”, right?
Her: Yeah..
Me: Well, don’t worry. My heart didn’t stop, ok?
Her: Ok

Every now and then, a good snack is called for.. especially if you’re a girl and require an occasional chocolate. 🙂

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

Getting Through the MRI

I got through the MRI quite well. After giving the radiology tech my medical history, I changed into hospital clothing and went into the MRI room.

It was a living room sized room with an MRI sitting in the middle of it. The MRI itself was only about 6 feet long. My mood instantly improved.

“It’s so SMALL compared to the one I had years ago!”, I said.

“Yes,” said the radio tech, “the newer ones aren’t so large.”

So I got my IV tube inserted and went into the MRI, so that only my head to my waist was inside. I closed my eyes after I got situated on the table, so I had no overly terrible feeling of being inside even a short tube. I had a comfy pillow to put my head on, and headphones with music from 100.7 playing, not that I could hear it above the sound of the MRI’s clunking.

When I was left with only the loud clunking, I had to play some mind games. I imagined that I was in a tanning bed (something I don’t use anymore). With my headphones on, it was easy to imagine. I started thinking about the last good times I had with my grandparents. I tried counting backwards from 1000 in threes, but seeing as I can’t do math in my head, I just did one number at a time. 🙂

Just when I started thinking, “Dang! This is taking too long!”, it was over.

I was only there for an hour. 1/2 of that time, I was inside the MRI. The rest of the time, I was giving medical history, changing clothes, or getting an IV.

Cake.

On the way to work, I was starving, since I was too worried to eat breakfast. I stopped at Scooters and got a Peach/Pear Plus Smoothie. Yum.

Here are some other good tips for getting through an MRI.
Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂

Weekends = Riding

We spent quite a bit of our weekend riding. It helped me to get my mind off of the MRI coming up on Monday.

One of my friends said that riding a motorcycle looked easy. Well, it’s not really. I mean, you become at ease with all the mechanics after awhile, but to me, it seems like there is always a challenge, always something to think about.

Riding in a group, like we do on the weekends, is a lot different than riding alone, like I do when I ride to work. When you’re riding in a group, you have to be cautious of the other motorcycles with you and keep your speed up with the group so as to avoid allowing a car to jump in amongst you.

When I ride alone, I only have to worry about me, and what the car drivers are doing.

Car drivers sometimes could be more careful about judging how close is too close and whether or not they have enough space to pull out in front of a motorcycle.

My safety class taught me how to stop abruptly. So far, I have not had to use that technique, but I still remember how to do it. It also taught me how to look ahead 12 carlengths to see what’s going on, so I can plan ahead. We’re taught to downshift through every gear on our way to a stop. This takes some time, but it’s nothing you think too much about once you get out on the road a few times. It just comes automatically.

I’m getting an ear for first gear, the handy gear to be in when you finally come to a stop. I love the louder “clunk” you hear when you find first gear. It’s a sign of the beginning of a trip or a sign of a successful stop. Sometimes it’s the sound when you have to follow a large farm implement down a road for a stretch.

Thanks for visiting Lisa’s Place. 🙂
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