Okay, I finsished Lord of Chaos and than took a few hours to read Uglies. Husband tells me I'm crazy to be reading a series that is permanently unresolved, but I'm so interested in the story and what Rand al Thor is going to do next. I keep hoping for love scenes, but, as I said to Husband, looking for romance in Robert Jordan is like looking for a tomato at McDonalds. You keep thinking you'll find one, but somehow it's elusive.
Goose is still fairly high maintainence. It's my fault, I know I spoil her, but I'm not sure what to do about it. She cries, a lot. I still have to hold her a lot. And she just turned two. What to do.
Janey's black eye is fading to yellowish purple. I guess next week it will be gone.
T-Bone claimed to do 100 sit ups, 100 push ups and 100 jumping jacks yesterday.
Cheeseball made a very cute stick figure (literally) out of popsicle sticks and paper. He even gave him a back pack of sorts, which stored two different types of popsicle stick guns. His preschool teacher says he's the most creative kid in class. (I think she's just trying to butter me up).
Beulah has dropped her allegiance to David Archeleta. She likes Syesha (sp?) the most now. She still does not like Cream of Wheat. Cracked wheat also yields a snarl.
Husband is working on his book again. Now that my recreational reading is all caught up, I'm going to start helping him again.
Well we're off to go horde some oats. I don't like rice very much (except with curries) so I hope to be able to forgo purchasing it while the shortage looms large.

We saw this stranded seal at the tide pools at Point Loma last week. We had gone there at low tide and this poor seal had been washed ashore several hours earlier. The park rangers were there to keep people away, and just as our family left, we saw the the SeaWorld stranded animal team had come to save the day. The seal looked pretty bad; we saw it move its flipper once or twice but I suspect it's swimming around seal heaven now.
Our trip was fun. San Diego was perfect to visit. It's green from the recent rain and there are flowers everywhere.

Beulah was not pleased with cream of wheat for breakfast this morning. Between you and me, I don't like it very much either, but I managed to not yell about how we have it three times a week. (More like three times a month).
I had a mini crisis in Wal-Mart yesterday. I was looking for presents for Goose and I saw a "MyPod" from fisher-price, I think. Goose was immediately interested, "Want it! Want it!" I let her hold it for a while. It looked like fun; it had music features and flashed dots of light into numerals and probably letters, too. But I had seen too many cases of a little tiny person stuck on a little electronic device that they can manipulate, so I said no. We ended up getting her a handheld toy that just plays pretty music and flashes lights in time to the music. I don't mind her loving music--she's just too young and precious to be intimately involved with an interactive device.
Boon really stinks. I hear adds for miracle substances that supposedly remove stench from dog, but I don't think it's possible. Labs just really smell bad, unfortunately.

Janey and I are planning to refinish a boring old cabinet and turn it into a doll house. We have some little furniture pieces ("petite princess") that my mom inherited from Dorothy and we're excited to be able to finally display them. So I went to Wal-Mart and Target today with the hope of checking out generic wall paper only to learn that neither store sells anything besides borders. I'm planning to check out Home Depot tomorrow.

Last night Beulah and I watched A Walk in the Clouds. It was beautiful and sweet. Husband and I first saw it when Beulah was only 2 weeks old. (Husband's mother had come to visit and she was watching the baby). A couple of years ago, we were playing a game of Apples to Apples. I was the Judge, and my card was "Classic." Husband offered the card I chose, which was "Keanu Reeves."

And on a final note. . . . I read on the Round-Up bottle that the outdoor temperature should be at least 60 degrees for efficacy in weed killing. No wonder everything is still perky and green.

So I've always been curious about how strongly loud music really does affect your hearing. I attended my very first rock concert, ever, 20 years ago yesterday. I saw INXS at the San Diego Sports Arena. My friend and I had fairly good seats, (we were off to the right of the stage) and as I was only 14 years old, I felt like I'd been catapulted into cooldom just by having been there. Well, the next day (20 years ago today), I noticed an interesting fuzziness in my ears. I realized it had been loud, but that just made it even cooler, right? Well, in the next four or five years, I attended many more rock concerts in many different venues--xFest, which features Sugarcubes, PIL, New Order and De la Soul; Depeche Mode and Nitzer Ebb; Nitzer Ebb by itself (I got all the way to the front of the crowd and touched the guy's boots), the Cult; the Cure; the Cure and Love and Rockets; PIL and Flesh for LuLu; Anthrax, Megadeth, and a group which will remain unnamed; the Dead Milkmen; and They Might Be Giants. I think I might have left out something, but it doesn't matter. The point is, I was exposed to a lot of very loud music.

Now that I'm 34, with 5 kids, I notice that I often have to ask people to repeat themselves. I mean, I can hear fine, but I just want people to speak a little louder. So my good father-in-law gave me a hearing test and determined my left ear has a mild-to-moderate loss in the lower frequency area. He even gave me and over-the-ear Oticon hearing aid. Husband developed a cool website, http://www.understandhearing.com/, where I can take a hearing test and then have the results, as shown below. What I'm curious about is if my results are typical at all of people who have had a similar exposure to loud music. My dad has a slight hearing loss, but my mom's hearing is near-perfect.

I have also heard that pregnancy contributes to hearing loss but I'm not clear as to whether that is temporary or permanent.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to note one's hearing before and after attending a loud event, and then check it again in maybe a month or so, to see if there is an noticeable effect. My rock concert going days are over, though, as now I 'm much more interested in seeing a symphony perform Debussy's Fetes. The last classical performance I attended (besides Beulah's middle school orchestra concert) was Handel's Messiah. And that really wasn't very loud. The last loud event that I've attended was a Monster Truck rally. (Don't ask why) and I wore earplugs, left early, and won't ever go again. So it's an experiment for someone else I guess. Well, Goose is making loud noises from the kitchen (can hear those just fine, thank you very much). So off I go.