Fifteen Minutes of Delusion

Here it is, folks - the last week of school, and time to prepare for the big summer road trip. On Friday, the girls and I will pile into the van and head off across freeways with steadily decreasing designations for the start of our summer vacation. But before we can leave, there is a lot of preparation to do. This past week was already a busy one. I ordered a half-dozen frozen ducks, and had to defrost the freezer to make room for them. Then on Friday, we loaded the sauna into the van for our Saturday delivery. The lady who bought the sauna lives 4 1/2 hours away in Houston, so most of our day was spent driving and unloading and driving again. Fortunately, the apartment where we made the delivery was near an Ikea. Score! We had in-store credit and a completely empty van! The temptation to fill it nearly overwhelmed me, but I exercised caution and just bought four small things, including some lemon cookies. Yum. This week is going to be a mad dash to the finish line. I need to get the

Continuing our two-part series on Lyme Disease for Lyme Disease Awareness Month, we welcome back my wife Kara as guest blogger. To make matters even more complicated, ticks also carry other infections. If you have Lyme Disease, you will most likely have one or more of the other infections. The 3 most common co-infections are Bartonella, Ehrlichia and Babesia. Others include Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, mycoplasmas and viruses. They further complicate things by adding their own symptoms. The co-infections are pretty stealthy as well and do considerable damage. So by this point, I'm sure you're thinking – OK, so if a person thinks they have Lyme or one of the other infections just go to the doctor and get tested. Not that simple. The “standard” test for Lyme Disease is the Western Blot. When it is performed by a “normal” lab such as LabCorp or Quest, this test is between 10% and 30% accurate. The CDC has known this from the start and has always said Lyme diagnosis is a clinical

Readers, today we have a special treat: my wife Kara has written a couple of posts to help us observe Lyme Disease Awareness Month, which has been going on since the first of May. This is the first of two parts. Thank you, Kara! If you are a regular reader of our blog, you will know that our family has Lyme Disease. All four of us. Since we have been diagnosed with Lyme, we often get questions about how we all “happen” to have it. Quickly followed by “What is Lyme?”, “How do you get it?”, “What kind of symptoms do you have?”. We hope that the knowlege you gain here will be of help to you or someone you know and love. Lyme Disease is the #1 vector borne disease. It is a serious bacterial infection caused by Borrelia Bergdorferi, a spirochete. It is transmitted most commonly by ticks. Once infected, humans can transmit it sexually and also congenitally to the fetus. A bit about ticks: Ticks are little creatures but they carry big diseases. They can be as tiny as the period at the end of

We've always had a television. However, for the past year or so, we haven't had any TV reception. Our rooftop antenna got beaten to death in a hail storm, and it was nice not to have the added distraction. That all changed this week, as we got the DirecTV antenna attached to the side of our house activated and a receiver box installed. Now we get enough programming to fry the brains of a small city. It's nice. But I'm scared. Now, this is not to say that the girls haven't been watching TV during the last year. They have. But it's all been pre-recorded stuff. Anna has become an expert in all things Cosby Show, and regularly quotes from the various episodes. And Alyssa has watched Toy Story 25,263 times. So there was a viewing problem even before we got the satellite turned back on. My biggest fear now is that the annoyance factor is going to go through the roof. I don't worry about Anna picking inappropriate shows to watch - she's got a better eye for app

Alyssa got her braces today. Here's the before (complete with eye-patch, but that's another story): and the after: She did pretty well during the installation/application. Not perfect, but she managed. Unfortunately here at home things aren't going quite so well. One of the wires has poked into her cheek, and it's been a real challenge getting wax on it to keep it from poking her again. Also, one of the front brackets came off already. That means another trip to the orthodontist tomorrow. 20 minutes away. Nuts. And dinner was a non-event. We had a very soft quiche-type breakfast casserole, but didn't get more than a few bites down her. Even water was a tough sell. I don't think she's really in that much pain, but more along the lines of discomfort. Hang in there, Alyssa. You can do it!

Many of you know that artificial food colors have gotten the boot at our house, thanks to the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde effect they have on our girls. Not pretty. The problem is, natural food colors are generally lacking in quality. Well, the other day I bought some food colors made by India Tree. This purchase was inspired by Alyssa's repeated request for a Blue's Clues birthday cake, and the need to make it actually, well, blue. India Tree had some colored sugar sprinkles that had some pretty impressive color for being vegetable derivatives, so I decided to give them a shot. Today, as a test run, we made sugar cookies and frosted them with icing that used our new colors. As you can see, the blue (red cabbage) was still a little bit purple, but much better than any other natural colors we've tried. I was able to get a very nice magenta out of the red (beet). If we ever need true red, I think I'll add a tiny bit of yellow (curcumin) and a lot more of the red. The results are

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the San Diego area for work. I spent my evenings down by the beach. I really miss the ocean. A plan was hatched that first night, watching the sun dip towards the waves: I could bring the girls to the beach as part of our summer vacation. Now, San Diego is not quite on the way from Dallas to Salt Lake City, but it's actually not all that far out of the way. We would only be adding another 10 hours of driving. The hardest part is the cost of the additional hotel nights, but it looks like we may be selling the poplar sauna , so that may not be such a big issue after all. The schedule, however, is not working out quite the way I wanted. See, the little ice storm we had a while back knocked the kids out of school for a day, and they will now be using a make-up day. Because of what that does to our departure date, the day we would be able to spend in San Diego is a Sunday, and that presents some problems. We've been working very hard at our house to

Jezebel and her kittens are now residents of a nearby goat farm. Giving them away wasn't nearly as traumatic as it could have been. I don't think anyone even got watery eyes. Except maybe me, but I'll blame that on having just finished mowing the lawn. Yeah, that's it. I'm sure I got some dust or grass pollen in my eyes. The yard had grown very long with the cool rainy weather and the three weekends I was out of town, and vanity required me to cut it. I like to at least pretend to be a minimally competent groundskeeper when guests come to call. After I put Jezy in the cat carrier with her kittens, she sat down and sulked. I felt like such a heel - here I'd worked so hard over the last few months to build her trust, and then I betrayed it. Yes, I understand that it had to be this way and we were very fortunate to find someplace where the whole feline family could stick together. Still, I felt dirty. So I went and bought some ice cream. Cherry vanilla always helps

Tonight was Anna's band concert. For a bunch of sixth graders, they were quite impressive. Here's Anna with Ellie the Baritone and the award she won as one of the most improved musicians in the band.

We're giving away our kitties. You probably know that already if you follow this blog at all. We took them outside this afternoon and conducted a photo shoot. Then we posted the pictures in an ad on Craigslist with a photo of each. Of course, we're all freaked out about the thousands of people who get free kitties to make manapua and do other terrible things. Please - one or two or four of you really nice people that we know: Take a kitty!

I suppose sleeping for 9 1/2 hours at the end of a long trip is not so unusual. The fact that I didn't start sleeping until after 1:30 this morning, though, meant that it was 11:00 before I pulled myself out of bed. Little bit of a shocker there - I probably should have set an alarm. It's good to be home, although the next 50 hours or so are going to be filled with busy-ness getting ready for this next trip. Not that the trip itself will require a lot of preparation, but there are a lot of things that I couldn't do while I was gone, and need to have done before I leave. The lawn is one thing that should be on that list, but I'm going to ignore it for now.

There are storms in Texas tonight. Storms big enough that Frontier canceled my flight home. They booked us all on the next flight, which leaves 3 1/2 hours later than the original. My concerns about not having enough time to get dinner or have my suitcase make the connection appear to be unfounded. Well, at least I hope the concerns about the suitcase are unfounded. I won't know for sure until the bag is in my hot, tired little hand. But as for dinner, I did okay. I found a Kung Pao chicken salad, and it was good. Now I'm plugged up to a power outlet at one of Denver's handy little charging station, using their free internet access. So aside from not getting home until around midnight tonight, this delay is not such a bad thing. And since so many people told me to travel safely, I suppose I have no choice but to wait out the storms.

The time remaining on this trip is now measured in hours. The time before I travel again is only measured in days. I'm not particularly excited about flying off on another trip less then three days after getting home, especially with Kara still sick with whatever virus is hanging out at our house, but a man's gotta do... well, you know. I got my suitcase packed up this morning. I wasn't entirely sure that would happen. It was a pretty tight fit, and I still had a bunch of stuff to squeeze in. Then I noticed that the expand-o-matic zipper was in the closed position. Once I zipped it open, I had plenty of room. The other reason everything fit is that I am leaving behind all but four of the 12 books I either brought, bought, won, or was given over the weekend. I saved Christmas and birthday money for the LDStormakers conference bookstore, where great bargains can be found. I picked up books from most of my writer friends, but failed to have them autographed. Why? I have no go