Wrenzy had to make a video for school about herself and her summer.
The first week or so of school, Ever came home a couple of different times saying her math teacher, Mrs. Wagner, had made a comment that day about how smart she is. Ever also said one day that they had worked on a problem in class, and she got a different answer than Mrs. Wagner and most of the class (although one other student got the same answer as Ever). According to Ever, Mrs. Wagner shut her down quickly without letting her really explain her answer. Jim looked at the problem with Ever that night and confirmed that her answer was correct. So Ever went back the next day and told Mrs. Wagner, who acknowledged that Ever was right but didn't give her the big public apology she and Jim thought she deserved. Then on September 3, Jim e-mailed Mrs. Wagner about school supplies she requested for the class. In her response, she said, "Wow, Ever is very intelligent:). She and I will be sparring partners this year. She challenges mine [sic] and her own thinking. I am really looking forward to the level of academics being raised by her input in class!" Super proud of Goose. That's high praise. But also kind of funny in light of the above-described incident. Ever is keeping Mrs. Wagner on her toes, I guess! (P.S. I can add that by the end of the year, Mrs. Wagner was unabashedly calling Ever her "opp" [slang for "opponent"], and it was a very love/hate relationship - probably more hate than love. So that was unfortunate.)
I saved this picture (Kaia Johnson beaching with Tiny) on the night of September 4th. Can't tell when it was taken or if I posted it before.
I learned a lesson in early September - don't bake with parchment paper unless you have an oven rack above the pan to keep the parchment from touching the heating element. I was going to make brownie ice cream sandwiches, but instead, I started a fire.
Maggie Long texted Katie Gustafson and me on Wednesday, September 11 and asked if we could cancel our weekend plans to stay at a beach cottage with her on base (Camp Pendleton). She'd booked it for a stay with two college friends Thursday-Sunday, but they'd had to cancel at the last minute. So Katie and I made ourselves available, and Hilary Lawrence came also. We convened around 7:00 P.M. Friday evening and just talked for hours and ate brownies and ice cream. Hilary and Katie slept on air mattresses. I slept on a folding twin bed supplied by the cottage, and Maggie took the bedroom. Saturday morning Maggie slipped out for a run, and I was super bummed we hadn't planned ahead so I could go with her. I didn't want to make noise until I was sure Katie and Hilary were awake, so the three of us weren't up and at 'em until close to 9:00. Maggie returned soon after we got up, and we ate muffins and fruit and chatted for a while. Hilary left to go to her girls' soccer game and do some other family stuff. Katie, Maggie, and I finally got moving around 12:30 or 1:00 and blew up my kayak. Maggie and I went out first (in the harbor by the cottages) and could not stop going in circles. It was funny, but also I could not figure out what was going on. Jim suggested afterward that maybe we had forgotten to insert a skeg. Whoops. Katie and Maggie went out briefly after Maggie and my attempt. That concluded our rather pitiful outdoor adventures for the day. Hilary returned, and we arranged to meet Tara Nearents and Shanna Warr, who were going to join us for fire-pit time. We picked up some food on base and then ate and hung out around the fire pit. Super nice, fun, good people. It's really nice to have lady friends in the gospel. Tara and Shanna took off around midnight. Hilary headed home, too, and then Katie, Maggie, and I realized it made sense for us to head out that night, too, instead of getting beds ready again and crashing, only to hurriedly pack up and get out in the morning before church. I got home after 1:00 A.M., worked more on my Primary lesson (Jim and I were subbing), and went to bed about 3:00; then I couldn't sleep.
Katie, Maggie, and I all have night guards, so that was discussed on Friday night. I mentioned my history with TMJ but said my locking jaw hadn't really been a problem for a while. Then Sunday morning I woke up with my jaw locked, and I couldn't unlock it. I could barely open my mouth the width of two fingers, and it was very painful move my jaw certain ways, like when I brushed my teeth or used my tongue to get food out from behind my teeth. Eating was very difficult, and I couldn't eat hard things at all. Jim suggested I use it as a diet opportunity since I had been wanting forever to finish losing the weight I gained during pregnancy. But I was so angry about not being able to eat, and I just ate despite the pain. When I was treated for TMJ during law school by some bigwig specialist, he finally said to stop wearing my nightguard because it was either my jaw or my teeth, and the only thing left to do was Botox injections into my jaw (which he sort of dismissed out of hand as an option; I assumed because it was too experimental or extreme a treatment at that point in time). So when my jaw locked and I couldn't unlock it, I thought I should get Botox. Susan Oddou did some Googling trying to help me and discovered that Matt Packard, Kristi Rondo's brother, at Packard Dental in Carlsbad did Botox. So on Friday, five days after my jaw locked, I had an appointment with Dr. Packard, who prescribed seven days' worth of a muscle relaxant to take before bed. I also scheduled Botox injections into the masseter for a week later. After a total of 10 days, before my Botox appointment, my jaw finally opened. It was a terrifying 10 days. I had begun to fear that it was permanently locked (which apparently can happen) or that I would need jaw surgery. As I am finishing this post in July 2026, I can add that I started seeing a TMJ specialist recommended by our dental office. I spent thousands of dollars there on Botox injections and new nightguards. He explained to me what was going on and seemed to know what he was doing. (I did realize, upon seeing this specialist, that Matt Packard probably took a weekend course on TMJ and learned how to do Botox injections and really knew nothing about it. Matt and a lady in his office said I would notice an amazing difference after my injections; it would just be life-changing. It was super nice.) Anyway, after visiting the real specialist, my jaw stopped locking, and I thought I was cured. In recent times, it has started locking again in the night sometimes. So far, I've been able to unlock it pretty quickly. But I live in fear.
Tiny rode her bike on a lovely day.
The defrost on the Chrysler Pacifica continued not to work, making me crazy. I took this picture in case I decided to try to go back to the dealer with evidence.
Simone Biles came to Oceanside (the new Frontwave Arena less than ten minutes from our house) on the first stop of the Gold America Tour, and Ever asked if she could go if she paid for her own ticket. They were super expensive - and Ever decided to shell out a lot extra for a close seat. I had to buy myself I ticket so I could take her, so she really stuck it to me. Once there, we learned that the arena is really small and cheaper seats would have been totally adequate. It was a fun date night with Goosey, though. Besides Simone, the biggest draws were Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles, whom we had also watched compete at the Paris Olympics. There were also some male Olympians and a big supporting cast. It was fun, with music and dancing. The gymnasts didn't do anything crazy because, of course, they don't want to get injured in an exhibition, so that made it a little anticlimactic for me. Although one guy actually did get injured upon landing a tumbling skill. It was devastating to watch. He had to get carted off. I was so sad for him.
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| I think this is Simone Biles doing nothing exciting on the beam. |
Goosey got a picture with Delphine Cascarino after a Wave game.
Berry explained her cereal retrieval method: "Then it falls, and I catch it, and ... done!"
Tiny does a fun thing with her mouth. It reminds me of a horse, but it's more cheeks, less lips. This isn't the best example of it, but it's all I've got recorded.
The Paul and Susan Oddous and the Karners were over for dinner when Tiny came in holding an egg that she had found outside and said there were more. I was so confused about where it came from and wondered if it were fertilized, and I told her to put it back outside because it freaked me out. But Jim said, "Bring them all in!" So Tiny returned with an armful of eggs, plus grass and sticks and stuff. There were a total of 14 eggs in a nest in some tall grass next to our driveway near the garage. Turns out the chickens from four houses up had decided to start nesting by our house.
We learned to leave a couple eggs in the nest and bring in the others so that the chickens knew it was a safe place to keep laying.We got free eggs for weeks. Wren and Tiny enjoyed them for scrambled eggs. Ever remained terrified of them, so she only got them when I baked them into things. The crazy lady who owns the chickens came down and discovered the nest on our property. She tried to talk to me about it once, and I got away quickly to run to a soccer practice. It was a weird situation because I felt like if she was letting her chickens roam all over and lay eggs on other people's property, then she didn't get to go onto other people's property to look for eggs and claim them. But I also felt sheepish about secretly getting free eggs for a long time.
Tiny had a playdate at Kaia Johnson's with Kaia and Maya (and Kaia's sister, Stella).
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Ever, Alina Karner, and Evan something-or-other signed up for after-school volleyball. It's a minimally invasive, six-week commitment. The after-school sports meet right after school, 3:00-4:30, three days a week. After the first couple weeks, they assign teams; over 100 kids are on the novice team, 15 kids are on JV, and 15 kids are on varsity. Ever is loving it, but she she wanted to quit if she didn't make JV. She's never played before, so I was nervous, but she found out she made it! She is supposed to fundraise for choir by selling Otis Spunkmeyer cookie dough (they take a trip to an amusement park, where they perform and play), and she's also supposed to raise money for volleyball. The day the volleyball teams were assigned, she came home and told me about it. She also looked up her math grade and discovered she had gotten 4/4 on a test that the teacher said everyone had done really badly on and not to worry. After a snack and discussion of all the good news, Ever said, "I'm going to go sell cookies." She didn't even ask if I'd come with her, and she had no hesitation. She asked if Wren wanted to go with her, but she didn't. So Ever got change and took a clipboard and the cookie dough order sheet and went out to knock on neighbors' doors. What a great lady.
On the way to gymnastics class, I got to hear a conversation between Wren and Tiny that I imagine is how they always chat when they're alone, while lying in bed before going to sleep or while trailing behind on a walk, when Jim and I wonder what they're talking about. For some reason, they just talked in normal-volume voices as if I weren't there, and it was so great. First they debated which one of them is shier. (Shyer? Merriam Webster says either).
Tiny: "I'm afraid of all adults. Except Rebecca. I'm not really afraid of Rebecca."
Wren: "I'm afraid of Rebecca. Are you afraid of Miss Susan?"
Tiny: "Yeah."
Wren: "Me, too."
Then they talked about dreams. Wren said she'd had a dream that Susan (Oddou) hit them with metal pipes and locked them up forever. She'd also had a dream about flying, and she thought it was real and tried to fly by jumping off "Ever's ladder" (the bookshelf ladder in the triple bunk that leads to Ever's bed). She also said she'd tried to be invisible, and it didn't work, but she knew she couldn't be invisible. Tiny said she'd also had a dream about flying, but she knew it wasn't real. They wondered aloud how they'd gone "from adults [the fear thereof] to flying."
We passed a purple car, and they both said, "Purple car, good luck." Wren said it first, so she said Tiny was going to have bad luck. Wren said, "When I see pink or purple cars, I store them up. Then when something really bad happens, I bestow on myself all the pink and purple cars." Tiny agreed: "When I see a pink or purple car, I say [in a whisper], 'Save.'" Tiny said, "We should both drive pink cars so we can give little kids luck." Wren said, "I know, I told Mom on a hike earlier, like a long time ago, that I was going to have a pink Jeep." Tiny said she wants to have two cars, a pink car and a purple car, so "everywhere I go in one of my cars, and even on my driveway, everyone gets good luck."
There was much more to the conversation, but those are the highlights are remember. It's hard to capture just how cute these people are.
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