How K Got Her Name

Last night, about 8:45pm, K tells me that her 7th period teacher wants an essay from each kid on how they got their name. I think this is a great idea. I get ready to tell her the story (again), so she can write her essay when we get home. (It was a crazy day yesterday, and we were out eating dinner)

"No, Mom. She wants YOU to write the essay."

"Um, I'm not a student. I have a tough time believing your teacher wants the PARENTS to write the essay."

"Seriously, Mom, she said she wants the parents to write it. I promise!!"

I'm still not entirely convinced I'm NOT being conned, but on the off chance she's right, here's the essay that I quickly typed up and emailed to her teacher this morning.

How Kysa Got Her Name

I was about eight months pregnant with my oldest child when crisis hit. I already knew I was expecting a girl, and I’d chosen a name for her (Samantha). One of my closest friends finally came in to town, and wanted to see my ultrasound video that I had of my expected baby.

As she watched the video, she started making comments. She’d say things like, “Oh, look, there’s Samantha’s arm!” or “Oh, there’s Samantha’s little mouth!” I wanted to slug her and say, “QUIT CALLING HER THAT!!!!” (read that with a slightly crazed, demonesque voice that pregnant women sometimes have)
I realized that while pregnant rages are quite normal, the fact that I didn’t like someone calling my unborn child by the name I had chosen was probably not a good sign. With that conversation, I realized that while I did love the name Samantha, I didn’t feel it was right for this child. I was in a panic- this baby was coming in less than three weeks, and I had NO IDEA what to name her.

At the time, I worked in a model home. Things were fairly busy, however, I did have a lot of time to reflect on the fact that my poor child was still nameless. This was definitely a sign that I was going to be a terrible mother.

One afternoon, I was at work, obsessing away, when I heard the door to the model home open. In walked my grandfather. This was quite a shock, as he’d been dead for over three years. Once the light was out of my eyes, I realized that while the resemblance was striking, this was actually his brother, who was (obviously) very much alive.

He had heard I was working at this model, and had some questions regarding my mom and her siblings. He is an avid family history researcher, and needed some birth and anniversary dates for our side of the family. I gave him the information he needed, and then said, “Since you’re working on our family history, you must have come across some good names in our family tree. I am looking for suggestions for a girl’s name for this baby.”

He gave me a look like I’d better hurry and come up with something, and FAST (I also was carrying very large, and people were very nervous to be around me that last month; they were terrified I’d drop and give birth at any second). The first suggestion he gave me was terrible, but the second suggestion was “Kaijsa Marie”, from a Swedish branch of the family. I LOVED how the name rolled off the tongue, and asked him to spell it. Hmmm. I didn’t like the spelling. Nobody would ever pronounce or spell “Kaijsa” correctly.

I said goodbye to my great-uncle, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to anglicize the spelling of Kaijsa. By the time I left work, I’d decided that “Kysa” was going to give her the best chance of easier spelling and pronunciation.

I came home that night, excited to share our baby’s new name with my husband. He was agreeable to to the “Kysa” part, but not the “Marie” part. I have to admit I was a little surprised by that- I thought “Marie” would be the easy part. After a couple days of playing around with names that had the same basic cadence as Marie, we finally agreed upon “Nicole” as the middle name.

People have struggled to pronounce and spell Kysa’s name correctly, and I still get the occasional hairy eyeball and accusation that I made the name up, but when I tell them it’s a Swedish name, and a family name to boot, they tend to shut up. I still love the name, but I do have to admit that Kysa’s siblings all have names that have appeared in the top 50 most popular names at some point or another.

There. All fixed!

If you've been to my house, you know that the road is in pretty terrible shape. J and I don't see eye to eye on this. He wishes the city would fix it. I LOVE it this way. For one thing, it gives everything kind of a nice country feel. Secondly, and more importantly, I think it deters speeders. People love to speed down our road, and I'm terrified that there's going to be a terrible accident one day.

We actually did have a fatality a couple years ago. On the same street,

but a couple blocks north, a couple was in their front yard, gardening. Two cars got racing, and one lost control and ended up hitting and killing the wife. The road there is in much better condition (different city).

So, I don't have a whisper of complaint for the state of our road. We joke about the lakes in the front yard. The city occasionally comes by and puts some road base in there, but it is a very temporary fix.

Today, I watched a pothole crew come to the roughest spot of road in front of my house. I have taken a picture and circled their work.

All better!

Honey!

My city has been offering some local co-op produce, and they were looking for tasters for the products. I volunteered, and this morning I tasted the honey. Here is my review of it.

This morning I got yet another reminder of just how little I know about food sometimes. Before this, I thought that honey was honey. Bees make honey. We eat honey. I didn't realize that there was a difference. I would just buy whatever was cheaper, though I would try to get locally produced honey if possible.

Turns out, they can process honey quite a bit, and it has a rather dramatic effect on it. Most of the

honey we buy in the grocery store is pasteurized and filtered. It makes for a nice, clear product, but the enzymes, antibacterial properties and other parts of the honey can change.

Today we sampled three different honeys. 1- BeeMaid Canadian Clover Honey (henceforth known as "clover"), 2- Miller's Pure Honey from Utah (generic) and 3- The farmer's honey (farmer's), also produced in Utah.

The first big difference we saw was appearance. All three were filtered, and the first two were pasteurized. The farmer's honey was significantly darker in color, and wasn't quite so clear.

We were given bread and butter to help us with the sample, but I mainly tasted each by itself to get a better taste. The next big difference was the consistency. The grocery store honeys were quite a bit runnier. I put a blob of each of the three on the plate, and then held the plate upright for a few seconds to show the difference in runniness.

Then came my favorite part- TASTING! I'll admit that I didn't taste a huge difference between the clover honey and the generic Utah honey. The utah honey was slightly better, but not a big difference. There was, however, an enormous difference in the farmer honey. It wasn't nearly as sweet. Now, I realize this may seem like a bad thing, but it really wasn't. It was still definitely sweet, but it had a more complex flavor, if that makes any sense. You didn't have that teeth hurting all consuming sweetness with the farmer's honey that you got with the canadian clover honey.

The best part is that it looks like the farmer's honey will end up being cheaper per pound than either grocery store honey, and by a fairly significant margin. Now, you'll have to buy more of it than what comes in a little honey bear, but good news- Honey is about the only food on the planet that never, ever goes bad.

If you are interested in buying, here is a link to the order form. You have to scroll past the citrus and beef order forms to get to honey. They are charging $13.75/tub (5 lb tub), and that works out to be about $2.75 a pound, which is a great price!

Leader/Daughter Retreat

This weekend was my girl scout service unit's Leader/Daughter retreat. It was held at Camp Trefoil, which is up Provo Canyon. Usually, when I go on long drives, I try to take our little Honda Civic, since it gets almost 50 miles to the gallon. However, there was supposed to be some snow this weekend, so I decided to take the safer route and bring along my Expedition. This turned out to be a very good thing.

We got to camp on Friday night. The lodge was absolutely beautiful, and we were amazed by how much snow was on the ground- there was at least 2-3 feet of snow.

The first evening, there was a murder/mystery performance put on by Hunt Mysteries. A cast of 7-8 people come, all dressed in costume. They mingled with the group, in character, and you talked to them a bit. They then had people sit down, and they had dialogue. After a bit of this, a murder occurs. The "guests" have approximately 10-15 to talk to the characters individually to determine HOW the murder occurred, WHO did it, and the MOTIVE. You then filled out a paper with your guess and turned it in. Once those were collected, they revealed all. It was pretty funny because one of the characters showed up at the same time as my daughters and I, and we had chatted quite a bit and really hit it off. We bantered a bit once she was in character. As it turned out, I decided she had committed the murder.

S was really taken with all of the characters, especially the bride. She begged to have her picture taken with her.

Once the murderer was revealed, they did a drawing of all the people who had the correct answers. I was one of the winners!! The murderer said to me, "How could you accu

se me of murder?! I thought we were friends!". I retorted, "Just because I think you're a killer doesn't mean I don't love you!" I thought it was hilarious, but maybe you had to be there. The performance was a LOT of fun, and I would recommend it to anyone.

For sleeping arrangements, there were three options: Party Lodge, with no curfew, then a different building with a midnight curfew, and then the bunkhouse, with a 10:30 lights out time. We decided to go with the funsucker area, and boy am I glad we did!! The other two places were huge, communal sleeping areas with dozens of people in the room. The bunkhouse had individual dormstyle rooms, so the girls and I got our own room. Once we were in there, it was silent. Beautiful silence.

The next day, they had some guys come in to do a dutch oven cooking demonstration. They were very friendly, personable and knowledgeable. Once I find out their names/website, I'll link that here as well; they were also top notch. They showed us how to make dutch oven lasagna, and then served it for lunch. It was A-MAZ-ING. I'm anxious to try it out at home.

After lunch, the girls and I went outside. I shoveled walks while they went sledding (it had been snowing lightly all day). Then, we went snow shoeing.

S did amazingly well considering the snowshoes were all the same size, and almost half her body length.

Then, we went to go cross country skiing. Unfortunately, they didn't have boots/skiis small enough for her, so she played in the lodge while K and I took a spin. It was a lot of fun, and I would've liked to have gone longer, but it was about to get dark.

This morning, we get up to find that it had been snowing hard all night long. I had to dig my car out of the snow; there was probably at least 18" of snow on it.

We finally got out to the main canyon, and found that highway patrol had closed it due to treacherous conditions. After about a 45 minute wait, they opened up the canyon again, and our drive home was uneventful.

A concerning doctor's visit

(warning- puss mentioned, so if you have a sensitive stomach, just stop reading once the doctor comes in the room)

A few days ago, I started developing a third nipple. That's concerning enough, but it was the placement and pain level that really freaked me out. Where was this third nipple, you may ask? It is on my calf.

By this morning, I was really having a tough time walking, which makes exercising difficult. It also was making me turn into a whiny baby, and generally a pain in the a..... um, calf to live with.

I made an appointment to see a doctor this afternoon.

When I got there, they gave me one of those light up flashing coasters that restaurants use. I thought this was funny, considering there was only one other person in the waiting room. Nevertheless, I sat down with my coaster.

Within a few minutes, it went off, and I obediently gave it to the medical assistant waiting for me. She took my back, and took all of my vitals (pulse, oxygen level, weight, blood pressure). The blood pressure machine was facing away from me, so I couldn't see what my blood pressure was. She looked concerned and said, "Your bottom blood pressure (sic) is kind of high. Maybe it's because you're feeling anxious, or maybe you took the stairs. If you want, you can sit here and relax for a few minutes and we can retake it if you'd like."

Concerned, I looked at my blood pressure to see what it was.

121/83

Really? 120/80 is considered "normal". 83 wouldn't make anyone even bat an eyelash, or so I thought. Meanwhile, this MA is sitting there looking really concerned.

I took a couple deep breaths to fend off the attack of the giggles coming on. Then, I told her that it's normally lower, and I wasn't concerned, and she could count that as my blood pressure. Still a bit unconvinced, she led me back to a room.

Eventually, the doctor came back. He was very nice, and could be a great candidate for the general family doctor that I've been half heartedly looking for.

I showed him the third nipple. He informed me that it wasn't a nipple, but an abscess (ANOTHER abscess?!). I couldn't decide whether to be relieved or disappointed. I lean towards relieved, since I think I have pretty nice legs, and having a nipple on the calf generally isn't considered classically beautiful.

He told me we have two options:

1- put me on oral antibiotics, and come back in a couple days if it's not improving

2- lance it

I told him that I'm a picker, and generally speaking, I'd be all over lancing it. However, I was pretty sure that it was full of blood, not puss, and that's really not a lot of fun to pick at.

Now it was the doctor's turn to try and keep a straight face (he doesn't know me well enough to know that it's ok to laugh at me). He told me he agreed with me. He said my abscess was XXX (can't remember the technical term, but basically, rather hard to the touch, and felt/appeared as though there was no puss) vs. YYY (which would feel really soft and squishy, and look like it was ready to pop). So, he measured the actual abscess (2 cm), and then drew a line around the reddened, infected surrounding area (about 5") to mark where it was at. Then, he gave me a prescription for some antibiotics, and sent me on my way.

I'm hoping that I feel better tomorrow, because I'm even sick of my whining!

Delusional

I have decided that I want to sink into a delusional state. In said state, the family and I are in Fiji. Kids are playing on the beach, while J and lay back in lounge chairs and watch them frolic happily, not a fight to be seen. If not Fiji, maybe Thailand?

That sounds much lovelier than here. It's been bitterly cold. I guess I can't complain, most of the US in "Snowcopalypse 2011", and buried under feet of now. Very little snow here, but it's been in the single digits. Makes me feel my lack of a garage even more.

We took the daisy scouts to the fire department for a field trip last night because our elementary school was having parent/teacher conferences, and we were asked not to meet there this week. It took us a few minutes to figure out which door to go to, and we nearly froze. Girls loved the trip though.

Speaking of parent teacher conferences, that means the middle kids are out of school early alllllll week. Yay. My favorite!

I think my daiquiri needs a refill. It's getting all melty in the hot sun...

Girl Scout Cookies

I know that I've been very quiet lately. Part of is that I've been so busy. Ironically, nothing terribly interesting has happened.

I got an iPhone. I like it. I understand the love affair with them now.

Five of my chickens are on egg strike now. Only the silver laced wyandotte and one of the easter eggers have laid anything since New Year's. I'm wondering if it's the cold? (of course, within an hour of posting this, the easter egger who lays the beautiful seafoam green egg produced an egg, so I guess only FOUR of my chickens are on strike now)

I've been trying to get immunotherapy for allergies for both K and M. I'm hoping that by doing two shots per kid, twice a week, they can not have severe reactions to animals, grass, trees and weeds. Finding time to make the drive (20 min each way), and waiting for 30 minutes at the clinic after the shots has been difficult. If we can do the two shots a week for another few weeks though, they will have progressed to the point where it will only be once every THREE weeks, which sounds much more manageable.

K & M are playing Jr. Jazz basketball. That's taken up a lot of time in our evenings. It's been interesting and fun to watch them improve.

I've had two sales fail for real estate through no fault of mine or my clients. Both were short sales, which are notoriously tricky and difficult to close. We actually closed our end of one transaction, but the seller didn't follow instructions, and the house ended up going into foreclosure. I had a listing expire, which was really sad for me. I really wanted that house to sell, mostly because the seller NEEDED it to happen. The market is tough, and the house was a "project" though.

I volunteered to help with the spectrum testing last weekend. I'm volunteering as a judge for the science fair tomorrow.

I'm still working out 4-5 days a week. Still chubby, but I'm fairly fit. I can actually run 3 miles without stopping, which is HUGE for me.

I started a Daisy Girl Scout Troop for S. It's been a smashing success- we have 31 girls in our troop, though only about 25 or so come regularly.

Speaking of girl scouts, it's girl scout cookie time! I have to turn in my orders by January 31st, so if you want to order, let me know. We've been doing a bit of door to door sales, which I really hate. However, I really want both of them to be able to go to the cookie party this year. To be invited, they have to sell 250 boxes of cookies EACH. We are at just over 300 total now, so we still have to sell a couple hundred before they can go to that special event.