Ticks, rabbits, and colds

Bobby found a tick in Robert's room this morning. Common dog tick, not typically disease-laden, and it hadn't eaten in a long while. Whew, and gross. Ticks give me the heeby-jeebies.

I spied a rabbit this afternoon trying to climb over the garden fence. It was up on its hind legs with its front paws hooked on the topmost rung in the fence and it was trying to pull itself up while half-hopping off of the ground. Clever, but in effective. He poked around the fence a little more near a hole I had just patched up.

Yeah, I know about that hole, you varmint. Your exclusive soirees with my strawberry plants have suddenly come to an abrupt end. What'cha gonna do about it?

The bunny hops over to one of my baby pear trees and stretches as high as his legs will take him. Leaning on the trunk that is now bowing halfway to the ground, he nibbles at the leaves just brushing his lips. That's when I open the back door and send him running.

I take a second look at my blueberry bushes and see similar bunny damage on them, too.

I wish...*sigh*...I wish I didn't have to turn my backyard into a chicken wire corn maze just to keep the bunnies out. Fences are a hassle to mow around, and maintain, and design in just such a way that they are kid-friendly and yet ruthless to varmints. I always knew I would need some sort of protection for these plants once they started bearing fruit. It never occurred to me that their leaves would be enticing enough as-is. Pbbbsh.

I will need to speed up the timetable on my rodent exclosure.

In other news, I'm sick again. It hit me in the head and chest: congestion, inflammation, exhaustion, a voice as deep as Barry White. I gave myself a "sick day" today, forcing myself to restrict social engagements, relieving myself from odious household chores, and giving the kids a bath and a movie for no reason. I got to rest a bit during quiet time, which would have been nicer with some decongestants coursing through my veins, but those are strictly forbidden during pregnancy. Tylenol, fluids, and bed rest are the tools I'm working with here :(

We're at 22 weeks with this pregnancy. I'm thinking the baby is a girl, now. No particular reason. We'll hopefully find out next week at the ultrasound appointment. Just for fun, we played around on the Baby Names Blog recommended to us by a friend. We laughed SO hard at the long list of nicknames for a names so simple as "Jill" and "Molly": Jillybeans, Jillyboo, Ta-Molly, Mollywog, Molecule. Heck, I love the nickname Ta-Molly so much, I might just want to call her that anyway...if this one's a girl at all.

That's the update I've got for ya'. Kinda random. No deep thoughts as of late. I'm starting to miss them.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Sorry I have been lax about this.  As Susan said I have been out of the country in India for work.  Bangalore India to be exact.  This post is a but long, so please don't think Susan wrote it.  Even though I tend to not write much I have 3 weeks to write about much of which was spent on the other side of the world.  After the last reorganization at work there are a number of projects that are moving from there to here, so I went with several other people to learn about them and "pick them up".

The trip started out Saturday morning.  We drove to Chicago and got to catch a plane to Paris.  We did not realize that there are NO restaurants behind security in the international terminal of O'Hare.  So we all had sandwiches sold from a news stand ($20 sandwiches).

On the way to Paris they had oversold economy, so I got bumped up from "Premium Economy" to Business Class.  That was very nice.  I got a chair that almost turned into a bed.  I got to eat stake.  And, perhaps because it was Air France I got the following.

I didn't eat any of it, I don't really like the perfumed flavor of roses, but I had to send Susan the pictures from the Airport in Paris.  The airport in paris offers 15 min of free wifi.  It was just enough to send out an "I am still alive" e-mail to Susan, with the pictures attached.

The Airport was funny.  We landed on one side of the airport and proceded to drive to the complete other side of the airport, turn around to be at the back of the airport and go almost back again to where we had landed,  Then, I have to assume because they were doing construction on one of the terminals, we did not pull into a jet bridge.  Instead we got off the plane on the tarmac and all borded busses to drive us back to the terminal.  Because I was bumped up I got on the first bus, that went a bit round about back past many of the places we had seen from the plane coming in, and over to a terminal where we had to wait to catch a bus to another terminal.  I waited for what felt like 15 min for the rest of my group.  It turns out that the second bus mad a wrong turn or something and instead of going back around the airport once, they did it twice.

We finally borded a bus to the other terminal.  We passed by our plane, and many of the landmarks we had seen from the first bus, and from the plane to get to the new terminal.  There they forced us to go through security yet again.  After that we had a smal break to use the wifi and then we borded the next flight to Bangalore India.  I leaned why business class was twice as much as premium economy.  The food was horrible.  The seats were almost like a roller desk, and did not really recline.  I did not sleep at all during that leg of our trip.  The only good part about it was the movie selection, oh but wait, the headphones on my seat and the built in headphone jack put out static so loud that I could hear it just sitting next to it, so I did not even bother with trying to watch a movie.  Instead I listened to an audio book I had checked out from the library before I went.

When we landed in India it was midnight.  We made it through customs and found our driver.  I am sorry to say that I did not take a video of him driving that first night.  They were doing construction on the road from the Airport and the roads were relatively empty that time of night so for a good 20 min we were swerving on and off of dirt roads avoiding light poles and other things in the middle of the street at 40-50 mph.  The was quite the ride.  I have a few other videos of driving tere though.

These videos are mostly of us going to dinner or leaving work, well because that is what most the rest of our week was like.  We got to the Hotel, which is a very nice hotel.  We slept in and then went off to work in the morning.  We had lunch at work in the Cafeteria there, and then we picked a restaurant for dinner.  That was the routine for most of the week.

I do have to say a few things about the Hotel.  We stayed at a very nice hotel.  They had a very nice doorman.

Who would open the car door for us, and put our bags through the x-ray machine with a smile.  Yes, every time we went into any nice Hotel in India there was a metal detector for us to walk through a an x-ray machine for our bags.  It was a little odd, but I got used to it.

I also have to talk about the food.  Because of the difference in the exchange rate or whatever, a dollar goes a lot further there then it does here.  We went out to fancy restaurants every night and the food was amazing.

The first night we went out to the Pink Pompanon.  I think that is what it is called. They first served us a lentil soup.

Half of the soup had beet juice in it so it was red.  They poured it into to bowl right in front of you to make the yin yang like pattern.  It was very good.  I had the lamb biryani.  I love biryani rice to begin with and this was very good. They served in wrapped up in a bannan leaf, and let the leaf unroll.

After dinner we were so full we did not want any desert.  So we asked for the check, instead they brought us out a complimentary desert.  A shot glass with kind of an ice cream smoothy thing in it that you were supposed to eat with a sugar encrusted rose petal. It was a little odd.  How much did this al cost?  about $20 per person, and tasted a whole lot better then the airport newspaper stand sandwiches.  The other nights were equally amazing for the food.

We finished about noon on Friday and wanted to go sightseeing, because we had no idea when would be the next time we would be in India.  The first place we went was a 3 hour drive away at Mysore.  On the way there we went through several small towns and saw lots and lots of coconut and mango orchards.  We went to see the Palace of the Maharaja at Mysore.  Outside we were waiting to get in and saw a sake charmer.  

 I don't have any pictures of the inside of the palace.  They don't allow you to take pictures in there.  If you are interested just do an image search for Mysore Palace or Mysore Palace Interior.  It is rather amazing.

That night we stayed at Mysore and then the next day we drove to Halabeb and Belur.  These are two very ancient Hindu Temples. I have lots and lots of pictures of carves soap stone now.  Here are a few of my favorites.

We then drove 4 hours back to bangalore.  Went to the Airport and did everything in reverse that we did to get there.  Except this time I did not get bumped up to Business class, and I hardly got any sleep at all on the way back.

Graceful

Alice in her dance pose, showing off the dress Bobby brought her from India.

Buddy in his dance pose. He does love to follow his sister's lead...for now.

And she decided to wear this...

I asked Alice why she needed to consult with E. She said she just wouldn't know what to wear until she knew what E was wearing. Alice's friend's mom did not pick up the phone. Alice left a voice mail and got busy on her own ensemble. The last day of school was "Pajama Day" and Alice was not about to let this opportunity slip by.

She selected bright, colorful leggings, 5 white t-shirts (1 shirt was a loose collar and 2 of the shirts were worn upside down over her pants), and her bright green running shoes. The picture truly doesn't do it justice (she's showing off her grumpy face, her graduation medal, and a random preschool craft from this month):

To be completely honest, she has actually worn that exact outfit to bed once. She selected it back then to get a reaction out of us, and she selected it today to get a reaction out of her classmates and teachers. It REALLY paid off today. She was glowing with all the shocked attention.

As a side note, her friend E ended up with princess PJ shorts and a regular t-shirt since the princess PJ top was lost.

This girl...she cracks me up.

Already?!

Alice called her friend this morning to see what she was wearing on the last day of preschool.

Really?!

It's official: she's more social and girly at five years old than I had ever prepared for in a child of mine. We're in big, big trouble.