Getting Stuff Done

Yay for the combination of the second trimester energy boost and a relatively light schedule at school! In addition to spending hours trying to groom the dog, we've been getting some other things done, as well.

This past weekend, we finally celebrated the crumpet's half-gestation day...only a couple of weeks late...by going out to eat. I was very excited to get to wear one of the maternity-friendly dresses that Beth helped me pick out a couple of weeks ago. (No, no pictures. Every time I think I'm looking cute in my maternity clothes, or someone else tells me I'm looking cute, I have Alex take a picture...then I look at the picture, scream, and make him delete it. Sorry. If a good one ever shows up, I'll post it. Otherwise, you'll all have to visit and see the cute baby bump in person.)

Anyway, for this event we explored a new restaurant in town which will definitely be added to our regular list of favorites! There are not that many great restaurants here, particularly vegetarian-friendly ones, and though I had heard of Prescotts before, I had assumed that it was full of steak and veal like many of the other fancier restaurants in town. Then, a few weeks ago, the local paper ran an article about their vegetarian chef that absolutely had me drooling. And indeed, the food was wonderful! We had a great hummus as a starter, which was specifically labeled "vegan" on the menu. I'm not sure I've seen the word vegan on a menu except at a vegetarian restaurant before, so that was a treat. The waitress took the opportunity to specifically inform me that even though the salad dressing looked creamy, that it was also vegan. Then I had a butternut squash ravioli with roasted beets...so yummy! There were also two vegetarian entree options, so it was lovely to have a choice, even though the ravioli was the clear winner. We stuffed ourselves so thoroughly with the first three courses that we didn't even have room for dessert. They seem to have a nice wine list as well, so we'll have to return post-crumpet so I can enjoy that.

We've also been watching a lot of basketball. Go Huskies!

As promised, here are our crocuses:

I'm hoping they will survive the storm we've been having for the last 24 hours, a combination of rain, sleet, and heavy wet snow.

We finished our taxes (mostly Alex, I just read numbers off pieces of paper while he plugged them into the computer), and submitted my federal and school financial aid applications. We happily discovered that we can list the crumpet as a dependent on those applications, since they are for the upcoming year, and that this has dropped our "estimated family contribution" a lot.

I spent much time wrestling with the new online travel booking system that the clinic has in order to book my flights to Arizona and then ask for reimbursement...I'll believe it when I see the check show up in the mailbox!

I got my eyes checked and ordered new contacts. Miracle of miracles, the optometrist actually had IN STOCK almost all of the lenses that I needed. My vision is so bad that usually they have to be ordered in. Last time I got glasses, they told me I'd better spring for the expensive thin lenses because the old-style thick ones would have to be so thick for me that they would look ridiculous. Poor crumpet is not getting the best eyesight genes from her parents...but at least her dad will be able to teach her to engineer a really good trap for the lion trying to sneak up on her.

Yesterday, Jasper and I went off to the vet for a check-up and some vaccines. We're starting obedience classes with him (more on this to come) and he needed a few shots first. He had blood drawn to check for heartworm, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, and anaplasmosis (those last two are tick-borne diseases like Lyme). He had shots to vaccinate for distemper (whatever that is...oh, wait, just looked it up, and it is an RNA virus in the same family as measles that can be fatal to dogs) and Lyme disease. They dripped the bordetella vaccine down his nose, which he was remarkably good-natured about. The vet said he looks very healthy, and he's up 8 pounds from when we got him (61 pounds now), but doesn't look too large. We go back in a month for a second dose of the Lyme vaccine...with all the hiking we intend to do with him, and the possibility of him spending lots of time in Lyme-infested parts of New England, and the wretchedness that Panache the wonder horse had to go through when HE had Lyme, I was very excited to find out that dogs can be vaccinated for it.

There used to be a people vaccine for Lyme, too, for a few years, but the manufacturer got tired of getting sued for side effects and stopped making it. Getting-up-on-my-soapbox warning: VACCINES ARE GOOD! CHILDHOOD VACCINES ARE PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT! (Though the adult ones like pneumococcus and influenza are also great, and save thousands of lives every year.) The flu shot does not give you the flu. Vaccines do not give you autism (if there was any chance in the world of me voting for John McCain, which there really wasn't, it ended the moment that he mentioned in a speech that there were still serious concerns about this issue). Not vaccinating your children not only puts them in danger, it reduces herd immunity and puts everyone else in danger as well. It will take me awhile to figure out how to address this issue with parents in my practice. Some doctors refuse to care for families who refuse vaccines. I don't want to go that route, since I think taking time to discuss the issue with people over time might actually lead to a change in their attitudes, which is better than slamming the door on them, but I can understand the impulse.

But I digress. The other great thing we did this past weekend was attend the local symphony's "To Heaven With Mozart" concert. They performed the 3rd Violin Concerto and the Requiem, and it was wonderful. We kept joking that it was making the crumpet smarter by the second (as opposed to some other composer, of course...none of that inferior Bach or Vivaldi).

Favorite crumpet books for the week: Aunt Kate sent along a wonderful set, including two of Alex's favorites, "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble," which I had not heard of, "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," which is fantastic, and one book new to the both of us called "Pancakes Pancakes."

This was a huge hit, as it is all about where food really comes from (grain, cows, chickens, and so on). The crumpet was kicking along merrily throughout. We also read two great books from Sara, "Old Turtle" and "The Shape of Me and Other Stuff." Old Turtle has really, really beautiful illustrations, and The Shape of Me is just classic Dr. Seuss.


I love children's books!