National Ice Cream Sandwich Day…Timing Is Everything

I can’t help it. With yet another day in the upper 90’s and low 100’s, I can’t help but long for a hazy shade of winter. Maybe I’ll look back on this post in 6 months and wonder what on earth I could have been thinking, but for the time being I find myself looking forward to the next time I’ll feel cool. I feel a tremendous sense of gratitude to my coworker who decided to honor this great day by bringing in ice cream sandwiches for the office. Sometimes timing is everything.

I’m also reminded of a study my psychology teacher told the class about in college. He was trying to point out that correlation does not equal causation. To make his point, he was talking about a study that showed the murder rate in NY was closely correlated with ice cream sales. Now the point of the discussion was that ice cream should not turn us all into murdering sociopaths. That may be different if we have to listen to thousands of people going around saying “I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream.” Be that as it may, the real reason was supposed to be that hotter temperatures make us crankier, and they make us desire ice cream. The one thing I’ve never gotten about this study/example is who the heck has energy to go around killing people when it’s this hot? All I want from life on a hot day like this is a cold shower (and maybe my darn ice cream).

Speaking of being warm, A. has developed a new trick to beat the heat (not that our house is that hot). When we give her a teething ring, it seems to be about a 50/50 proposition that it will not end up in her mouth. Rather it will end up on her face as she scoots around trying to see what she can do and still keep the icy teething ring on her face. It’s actually really cute. In truth it may just be brilliant, as a nice ice pack on my head doesn’t seem totally unappealing right now.

Going back to the timing is everything theme, I keep chuckling thinking about the order A. has learned her latest tricks. We’ve been working on tummy time where she lays on her tummy. Our hope was that she would eventually crawl from this position, but she hates being on her belly. Time on the belly was instant invitation to fuss most of the time. The other thing we were trying to get her to master was rolling over. Care to guess which she learned first? The hatred of being on her belly must have been a good motivator to learn to roll, because she seems to have that one down. It should be interesting getting her to spend enough time on her belly to become comfortable enough to put some weight on the arms and crawl. Ah well, all is well in good time, eh?

Momma said there’d be days like this:

I guess that in order to really appreciate when all goes well, we all need those times where nothing works out as we would hope. Personally I just wish for as few of these days as possible, and when I’m in a week I would for the most part just assume forget, I try to think of the little things I really enjoy. This week, that’s just not coming as easily for me as I might wish.

There is something about a small persistent pain in the back that wakes one up at night that just seems to taint the way I view the rest of the day. It’s a little weird because it’s not the waking up that taints, it’s definitely the method. By way of proof, being woken up in the middle of the night by a wife willing to brave some fiercely terrible morning breath in order to give me a kiss before she heads to bed is one of those things that puts me in a great mood (often for days). Ah well, hopefully the meds from the doc will do as good a job alleviating the pain long term as they are doing putting me to sleep at night.

2 Things I really haven’t enjoyed this week:

Waking up with a back that feels like a Kimba (my dog) chew toy after I’ve spun her around for 5 min in the same direction. It’s not broken. It’s just really tight, to the point where my stomach hurts and I can’t tell exactly where in my back it hurts. Now that I’ve taken muscle relaxers for 2 nights it feels like the toy unwound but with a few teeth marks 🙂

Trying to fix a problem at work with a publication I spent months on. It’s rough because the problem with it existed due to a choice made by the person in my job before me, and now I find myself spending days I don’t have fixing a problem for a previous publication that we should be done with (to say nothing of the joy of telling others they have to spend time they don’t have). In fairness to the previous person in my job, I’m not sure how she would have known there would be a problem except now people are saying “now, why did you use that…” I’d be annoyed at her for making the choice if I could come up with some logic as to why I wouldn’t have made a similar mistake. Grrrr. It’s just disappointingly frustrating.

My 2 favorite parts of this week:

A. talking back to Barney (granted I always wish it was Sesame Street if I’m near but at least it’s not teletubbies), but getting her to smile and babble while I dance and snap to the beat was a great feeling. I posted a picture of the smile on her face at the time. Her babble and smile is one of those things I’ve thought about frequently this week, as I get frustrated. Yeah, I know. I was smiling and snapping to Barney, and that should probably never be admitted. However, children are a great excuse to be silly, and being off the wall cookoo is just about the best stress relief I’ve ever found.

As small a thing as it is, I still haven’t found a physical sensation better than the moment cold water covers my head in the shower after working out outside, getting piping hot and covered and sweat. I don’t know why, but for some odd reason, I take tremendous satisfaction from being hot enough that the cold water that hits my head runs off my nose feeling warm. There is just something about having worked that hard. Who knows, maybe the Shakers were on to something: “Hands to work hearts to God.” I’m not religious, but there is something to feeling better for having worked hard at something.