September 2013

Things we did this month:

Liam discovered that he does not particularly care for nuts, but rather it is the salt that is often put on nuts that he likes. We discovered this after he purchased a jar of roasted unsalted mixed nuts. He was very disappointed.

We discovered that the old dead witch tree that sits on our elderly neighbor's property (and which drops its dead limbs and peeling bark onto our property) has piles of sawdust at its base. The tree is literally rotting from the inside out. We hope to approach her out taking it down again this year. Last year she refused to let us take it down because there was "plenty of life left in that tree!" We were very confused, as it is a very very dead tree, but realized that she is about 90 years old and quite near to blind and is mistaking the leafy stranglevine all over its trunk for healthy branch growth.

Someone in Liam's office was hiding how much her dog allergy was affecting her at work, and Liam chose to stop bringing Nashua into the office with him. Some of his co-workers were very disappointed that there would no longer be a morning game of fetch, but Liam noticed an immediate improvement in his allergic co-worker. Her eyes stopped swelling, and her breath was easier. The pup gets bored at home, now, and he's a mighty terror again.

It dining room ceiling beams look much better now that they're stained and sealed. At last, they look finished, or at least not like a forgotten mistake.

Forgive the tarp, we learned our lesson the first time with the sawdust.

Elisabeth turned 28! There were flowers (thanks Mum!) and cream puffs shaped like swans (thanks Liam!).

Liam's shoulder continues to get worse. He asked for a referral to a physical therapist, but was instead sent to a shoulder specialist who then sent him to a physical therapist, both of which were unable to figure out what was wrong with him shoulder. The PT did notice that there was a rib out of place and poking the muscles, and popped it back to where it should have been. This had the affect of moving and changing the pain: instead of intermittent pain in three places, Liam had extreme pain in one place almost constantly. Medications have little to no affect on Liam (or his mother) so over the counter pain relievers are barely touching his pain. His shoulder is slowly improving (only paining him when he uses it, or when he moves his arm or lifts something) under the PT's care. The theory right now is that there might be a tear in his bicep. Check out this nifty steroid patch he was given to wear for a few hours! That's an electric thingy on the patch, and it would send little shocks into his muscle, seizing the muscle slightly and doing... something... to the medication in the patch. I'm assuming the steroid encourages the targeted area to repair the muscle.  Science is cool.


The new bookstore opened on my birthday (it's like it's both of our birthdays!), and it's beautiful! The reception from the community so far has been very positive. It was such a relief to move from 3,000 feet to 10,000+! It really struck us how cramped our old space had been when we were having trouble fitting all of the books onto the shelves in our new space. If we were having trouble now, how did we ever manage it in the smaller space? The only answer we could come up with is that we were wizards.

Sports writer and middlegrade children's writer Mike Lupica fills our event section on September 20th.