we have returned from the wilds...

guess where we went?

...of italy! we were in venice for almost two weeks (rich left us for a few days to go to slovenia) and are now trying to adjust to being back. we are all a bit jet-lagged still and waking at 4:00 in the morning, but we should be back to normal in a few more days. i have a ridiculous number of photos from the trip that i am still trying to get through, but for now please enjoy this image signore gus in his way-cool milan inter jersey. buongiorno!

i need a break!

i am taking a much-needed break. i will return, and hopefully i will have something interesting to write about. until then, please enjoy this image of la serenissima. bye!

cliffhanger with a combo twist

the combo twist can be quite harrowing

sophie is our sensory-seeking child. gus is and always has been "safety gus;" sophie is most definitely "danger girl." rich and sophie have developed this game of cliffhanger, where sophie stands on rich's chest while he is standing, rich holds her hands and then lets her freefall onto her feet. i cringe every time i see it. now he does cliffhanger with a combo twist (or spin--we haven't finalized the title yet): he does the drop then a bounce into a 360 one way, then a 360 the opposite way. i have a video of this that is hilarious; i'm going to put it on argusgallery.com if i can't figure out how to load it here. enjoy, and when i post that sophie has broken her ankles, you'll know why...

cliffhanger!

ready for twist/spin

action shot!

action shot!

and it's all over

sophie loves her daddy, especially when he's inducing dizziness

where to find U.S. sourced petroleum

i'm learning about gas!

okay, this is a fairly old idea--buy gas from distributors who sell primarily domestic product and we can help speed up the end of the war. but, that isn't really how things panned out and the war seems based on myriad other factors now that buying U.S. sourced gasoline can't change much. however if you are still interested, here is the link to which companies derive what percentage of their product from the persian gulf:

department of energy site

retailers such as citgo (venezuelan owned) are at zero percent because they import most, if not all, of their product from venezuela; surprisingly, canada sells us the most foriegn-pumped raw product. does this mean that if you fill up at exxon/mobil 28% of the gasoline that goes in your tank will be from the persian gulf? no...as petroleum is petroleum is petroleum and it all gets refined together and sent out to retailers as a giant melange of foriegn and domestic sourced product. so you really don't know exactly where the gas comes from when it goes into your car; you can only know that said company bought x amount of raw product from y region in any given year.

and that is our petrochemical lesson for the day, people.

"my room stinks."

"mom, my room stinks."
"no it doesn't."
"moooooom, my room stinks. it really does."
"gus, you are in a time out and you're not getting out early. just sit in there."
(distant gagging, wretching noises.)
"mom, i am serious. IT STINKS."
"you're fine."
"MOM! I THINK THE EXTERMINATOR SPILLED HIS POISON IN MY ROOM! THAT'S WHY IT STINKS!!"

okay, he's got my attention now. the bug man was here earlier to nuke a mass of something called "swarming ants" (which i mistakenly thought were termites and was thrilled to have an ant infestation in its stead). i'm not a big fan of insecticides or toxic chemicals in the home, but there were hundreds of these things swarming on the window next to my computer and it was giving me nightmares. they had to die.

i go into gus' room and he's in there, under the sheets, breathing through his pillow. it smells god-awful.
"okay, your time out is over."
"all my plastic stuff stinks."
"like what?"
"this--" and he opens up a clear-plastic container of seven years' worth of cheap, brightly-colored plastic toys that smells like ass. literally. i slammed the lid shut so fast that i didn't have a chance to notice that right on top of the toys was a cheap, brightly-colored plastic cup of sophie's that has been missing for months. of course, it had been filled with milk at one time and she threw it in there straw-side down so all of it leaked into the box. then she shut it. and there it stayed until today.

however now all of it will reside in the bernalillo county dump.

the family in happier, less malodorous times

i think sophie may be trying...

...to kill me, yet again. she has been cutting her first molars, all 4 at once, for the past month. she has taken to screaming almost non-stop during her waking hours, not wanting to nap, and wanting to get up at about 5:00 or 5:30 every morning. i am beat. i am exhausted. i look like shit. and i am about to kill rich for being able to sleep through sophie's screams AND get away from all this for 12 hours a day...lucky bastard. gus can sleep through everything too, but that is a good thing.

to give an indication of what i have been like, gus named is remote control t-rex, which roars and snorts and stomps on things, missy:

meet missy.

how embarassing.

i'm down with OPMD yeah you know me

there is a great article in the new york times today about OPMD, ocularpharyngeal muscular dystrophy, which is one of rich's areas of concentration both in research and in practice. he has a paper in review for the ophthalmic plastic and reconstructive surgery [journal] on the clinical treatment of such (from the ptosis side). he has a great love of this subject (he's been thinking about it since 1995, when he first started coming across patients here in new mexico) and was super duper psyched to see something on it in the NYX....take a look here!

iohwans (mostly)

mckenzie, anela and paul

thinking about our friends in phoenix today, and their lives as crispy little strips of bacon--a month's worth of days over 110 degrees so far! yikes. it's actually raining here at the moment, which is always a lovely event in the desert. happy labor day weekend everyone!