So, I give up. I was trying to back post all of the entries since mid-August, but most of the entries were incomplete at best. At some point, you just have to say, "Hey, this is what it is" and move on. I might fill in the gaps, but really, I just wanted to post about my romantic dinner with Mirabelle from last week, and all the rest of it was just holding it up.

Well, that and a chat with James (of blog naming fame) last night. He commented that even though he knows about all the various details about things I've done over the last few years since working with him, he doesn't feel like he is really connected to me any more. Which is true, since I see him far too rarely than my like of him would suggest I'd see him.

Body language, too, is important in communication, he further commented. Sure, you can read what someone writes on a website, but without the intonations and inflections in the voice, and the facial expressions and body language that accommpany the words, you don't receive the full story. He needs that to be really communicating with someone.

I suspect that goes especially when talking to people who do full-body talking, as Paul has on more than one occasion accused me of doing. Like it's a bad thing that my stories require the use of arms and legs to fully tell, or something (it isn't, and you just missed my rolling my eyes when I said it, and the smirk on my face. Or maybe I did one of my "Vicki" faces, as Kris calls them. I am a woman of many communication styles).

Paul has agreed to work through the Yale Death class I've been a little slow to start, but haven't given up on completely, with me. I was hoping to find someone near by to "take" the class with me, but really, I don't have anyone whom I can do the all night b.s. philosophy sessions with the way that Paul and I used to in the wisdom of our high school years. The folly of youth, mixed with hormones? Yes, THOSE people know what philosophy can be. So much more than we adults pretend to know.

I'm oddly enthusiastic about the class. I wonder if I could get some local friends in on it, too. If I could, I'd be able to convince Paul to come up here for our talk sessions (bribing Gena, of course, with free babysitting and some sort of spa visit).

Of course, my friends might be mad at me for bringing in someone who can philosophize all of the rest of us into corners.

I went over to have a romantic dinner with Mirabelle this evening. Meter decided she didn't want anything to do with me when I arrived, greating me with grunting noises that sounded suspiciously like I'm-really-trying-to-poop-so-don't-bother-me noises. Suspiciously. She decided bedtime was preferable to spending another I'm-going-to-poop minute with me, so off to bed she went.

Mark and Megan were planning on heading out tonight for some (possibly much-needed?) nudge-nudge, wink-wink, know-what-I-mean? Well, that, or a romantic dinner of their own.

Mirabelle and I spent the first twenty minutes I was there counting our money (well, her money) and going over our plan. We decided the best course of action for the evening was shoot videos, eat dinner, play for a bit, have pudding, shower, read a book or two, pray, and go to bed. Well, she would go to bed, I'd just write about the adventure, or something like that, waiting for the nudge-nudge to end.

When I was with my mom last in Orange County, she gave me the advice to always show a child the picture you took of her. I think the suggestion was to help the child understand what the camera is, but also to get a sense of self and be included in the picture process. So, with Mirabelle, I try to show her the pictures of her that I take. Which includes the videos. And which often end up in a loop of 2 seconds of something cute followed by 20 seconds of "Let me see! Let me see! I need to see! Push the button?" But, Mirabelle likes the videos, so we shot a bunch.

Right about when we were going to start dinner, Mark and Megan were on the way out the door and down the steps. Mirabelle realized what was going on and instantly panicked. Wait, wait, wait for me, I'll go, too! Mark tried to explain to her that it was just like preschool, and they would be back. Mirabelle clung to Megan harder, so Megan did what every mother from here to the other side of the world and back again does in these situations.

She bribed her child.

If Mirabelle didn't cry, we could have PUDDING! Glorious PUDDING! Heck, even I stopped crying at that point. I wanted the PUDDING.

I also picked up Mirabelle, so that we could go over our plan again, with the added event of PUDDING! I figured, if she was talking to me and sufficiently distracted, she wouldn't notice Megan and Mark leaving, and we could advert any meltdown disasters. I am one with the two-year-old child distraction techniques, and before long, we were once again enjoying our romantic dinner for two.

After a few pasta bites and a chicken bite, Mirabelle declared she was done, could she go play now? I said no, and explained she had to clear her plate before hopping off her chair to play. Which, to my surprise, she did. Just as she finished, Katie and Alex came down the stairs to say hello. Mirabelle and Alex took off back up the stairs, after Katie said it was okay, given Katie and me time to chat. I heard some details about Katie's riding lessons and her new horse, which sounded like loads of fun, before the two of us heard the two other non-sleeping people in the house screaming over something, I don't recall what, but it was VERY IMPORTANT to said two year olds.

So, Katie and I wandered back upstairs to see what was up. Much to my surprise, it was already 7:45, and time for PUDDING! Actually, I shouldn't have been so surprised, given that Megan and Mark had left barely a half hour before, but I felt obligated to both put Mirabelle into bed by 8 for Megan, and complete our plans for Mirabelle. We're on a mission kid! Time to eat your PUDDING!

Back downstairs we went and into the fridge we ventured. Where's the PUDDING? I asked Mirabelle. This? she answered, pointing to the container of salad I had just put into the fridge. No, that's not it. Any idea where it is? I asked. This? she answered again, this time pointing to the bottle of lemonade. Uh...

Eventually I figured out which container we wanted and pulled out the PUDDING! Mmmmmm..... tasty tasty PUDDING! We sat out on the porch, watching the sun go down as we ate tasty chocolate PUDDING! Mirabelle taking huge bites with her small spoon, I taking small bites with my huge fork. A nice moment.

Eventually, though, even I could not eat another bite of PUDDING! so I closed up the container, making the mistake of stating, "All gone." "I want to see," Mirabelle answered quickly. "I want to see inside. Inside. I want to see. I want to see." Aw crap.

Uh, tomorrow kid. You can look tomorrow. It's time for a bath, remember our plan? "I want to see." Great.

Eventually, through gentle insistence, which was more plunking Mirabelle down and removing her top and bottoms so that she could use the toilet before showering, I managed to distract her, yet again, away from the PUDDING container that really isn't empty, not even close, and onto the shower.

For the record, Keith and Katie's showers are AWESOME. Yes, as awesome as the PUDDING, didn't you see the capital letters? Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that bathing a two year old in the shower works best when you bathe them like 25 pound beagles, which is to say hop in the shower with them, tower over them, and scrub like you mean it. Mirabelle managed to avoid such a terror, but only by small margin. She showed me where all the toys were, found the hidden bar of soap, stopped the shower from draining so that she had a small bath, and stood under the delightful shower head as water rained down all over her.

I think that Mirabelle likes showers as much as I do, or at least playing in the water as much as the Smith brothers do, which made actually rinsing and draining the shower difficult. Once I pulled the drain cover off, she plunked her little butt down on the drain and continued to splash in the water, adjusting herself on occasion when she realized the water was still draining. Another six months and she'll be able to cover it completely.

After bathing, Mirabelle dressed herself, then waited patiently while I brushed her hair. We had our photoshoot before reading two books, one about dreaming of dinosaurs, the other about being a big sister who can just rock the world, and saying a night prayer. For the record, I suck at night prayers. I had even asked Mark and Megan for advice on what to say. Didn't help. Something about Jesus and watching over us and uh something else and okay say good night and amen already, kid, or something like that.

She said her amen and ran to her bedroom door, flinging it open and launching herself onto her bed, giggling the whole time. I was sure that Meter was going to wake up, with all of the noise, but she didn't. Not that it really helped. Mirabelle was tossing and turning for the next hour and a half, finally settling around 9:45. Meter started crying at 10.

I'm sure there's a trick to these small persons. I'm convinced of it. I just need to find that secret off-switch.

This morning's workout was two rounds (yeah, Breanne's going easy on us) of:

50 kettleball swings
40 overhead thrusts
30 situps
20 pushups
10 burpees
5 lengths (20m) of bear crawls

We had only two rounds because previous classes couldn't finish three rounds of the workout. Clearly Kris isn't in the class. There was a new girl in the class, who received a jolting introduction to Velocity. I'm not sure why anyone starts in the morning classes with Breanne, as tough as she is. It's like jumping into ice cold water just after waking up under a pile of warm comforters. The day after you learned to swim.

They should just have new people come in the evenings. More likely to retain new customers that way, instead of the morning workouts scaring them off.

Yeah, so, I'm finally able, if I warm up both slowly and enough, to run again. The transition from not being able to run and being able to run was really abrupt. I managed to jack my achilles on the last day of the Canyon trip, running up a sand hill "because it was there" (yes, the actual answer to Kris' question, "Why would you do that?"), so wasn't expecting to run for another six weeks again. However, lots of stretching, sandals, walking, more stretching, heat and ice, and what do you know, I managed my return to ultimate, though still no heavy impact plyometrics (box jumps and jumping jacks are still out).

So, on the warmups this morning, I was able to run at my 100% and keep up with Kris for the first three steps of the 100% warmup runs. Of course, when he runs the 100% at 82%, I can almost keep up, too.

I managed to complete the first set of kettleball swings in one go, all 50 in a row. The second set was 15, 29 and 6. The overhead thrusts, even with the lightest bar, I had no hopes of doing in one set. I opted for four sets of 10 for both rounds. The situps were easy, no problem there. The pushups I had to do from the knees, having exhausted my arms in the thrusts. And the burpees? Oh good lord, I was barely jumping in the second round. The first round's burpees I did fairly well, but still did the pushup part from my knees.

Now, the bear crawls, oh, boy, there I SHINED! I am at a serious biomechanical advantage on bear crawls, let me tell you. Never before has a long torso been so desirable! Two hands and two feet on the floor, facing down (facing up is a crab walk), move forward on all fours. With the short legs, my butt doesn't stick up waaaaaaay in the air like, say, Paul's or Kris', and I'm able to practically jog down the turf on all fours, limited only by how fast my hands can ove. Breanne can actually sprint on all fours, which I'll have to build up to. My bear walking pace, however, is as twice as fast as everyone else's in the class.

Rock on, long torso!

Good lord, have you looked at the price of textbooks recently? That Death class I've been following recently, has a reading assignment for five page in one book for one class session. Five pages. Buy the whole book for five freaking pages. I looked through all of the class reading assignments, hoping there would be a second reading assignment from the book. There wasn't.

The hardback book is $37. The softback book is $16.

$16 for five pages. Not that you would know this when buying the books before class starts.

I'd be so annoyed at the instructor for this, if I hadn't had the syllabus available to check before hand.

Time to see if the library has a copy.

Or if the rest of the book is worth reading.

Kris sent me a link to a Yahoo article today. The article was announcing that Tom Brady was out for the season with the knee injury that had occurred the day before. I look at the link, reading the article, wondering why Kris had bothered to send me the link. Did he mean to send the link to anothet IM contact? I'm not a football fan any longer. I don't follow the Patriots at all. Maybe Brady is on Kris' fantasy football league and he was sharing the news?

And then it caught my eye.

"We feel badly for Tom about the injury," Belichick said Monday. "You hate to see anyone go down. No one has worked harder or done more for this team than Tom has."

In particular, the "we feel badly" part.

Feel is a linking verb (want a full list?). That means when the sentence's complement refers to the subject of the sentence, the verb is a linking verb and the complement should be an adjective and not an adverb.

In plain English?

If you say you feel badly, you're making the statement that your nerve endings don't work well, and that you are physically less sensitive when touched or touching.

If you say you feel bad, you're making the statement that you are saddened, ill or otherwise have negative emotions.

So, while Belichick may have broken nerve endings, I suspect he meant to say he is saddened by Brady's injury.

Kris, on the other hand, really was just sharing the news. No, Brady isn't on any of his fantasy leagues. He thought I'd be interested in knowing. Either that, or he was preempting my sending him the link.