Psychotomy

So, Pi appears to be Milk Protein Intolerant.  It’s totally different from Lactose Intolerant.  Seriously.  We were going to make her a carrot cake for her first birthday, like we did for DK.  Specifically, we made two.  One for the guests, and one that he got to eat with his hands and totally mangle the whole thing.

Then we realized that, while I can substitute hemp milk for the milk in the recipe ( i think there’s milk, I never ended up looking) … The cream cheese frosting was going to be a serious bitch to do.  If we’d thought of it last weekend we could have gone looking at some of the other stores for creamed tofu alternatives. But we didn’t, soooo …

So we went back to our other plan, which was to make Pi birthday pies.  (we might alternate with cakes shaped like ?)!  Kiir suggested that for her first real sugary food, and her first birthday, Pi wanted a chocolate pie.

We decided we liked Alton Brown’s Moo-Less Chocolate Pie, because it’s obviously dairy free!  Well, we both HATE coffee, so we spent some time looking through that, and decided we have some banana liquer in the the fridge for the dirty banana martinis we’ve never made, we could substitute.

So after the aquarium, that evening we went out to get the tofu and the chocolate chips and the pie crusts.  Because our chips are all milk chocolate, and that seemed like it would be counterproductive.

It turns out that the store we considered most likely to have a good selection of things … well, to be fair, it did.  Except the only dairy free chocolate we could find was 100% cocoa at 1$/oz, and we needed 2C per pie … It occurs to me as I’m typing that that was unsweetened pure cocoa, so we probably needed to cut it with sugar/etc, so we didn’t need QUItE as much as we thought (from the nestle’s bags, 12oz is 2C, so… wow)

Apparently all chocolate is made with milk fat.  Which, frankly, is pretty much the opposite of milk protein free.  They were probably lactose free, but that didn’t matter so much.

Also, looking it up online, sounds like our closest store’s chain carries a dairy-free chocolate chips brand.  I don’t remember ever seeing it at ours, though, or that would be a REAL BOTHER!

Here’s hpoing it turns out OK, and she doesn’t get too upset by the dairy in the chocolate …

Posted in: PI by attriel /
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Today it was raining.  Tomorrow it’s supposed to rain.  It rained yesterday.  We decided that taking Pi to the zoo on Pi day was going to be cold, damp, and muddy.  And the animals would probably show more smarts and stay inside.

So we went out to the aquarium in Baltimore today, instead.  Nani & Pom’s gift this year for the two of them was the family membership.  The both fell asleep in the car, so we let them sleep a while.  Woke them up at 3, ~90 minutes of naptime.  DK kept running ahead, I think he was looking for something, but it turned out to not be the puffins or the sharks.  Might have been the arboretum, might have just been hyper.

Kiir kept running after him and trying to get him to stop an look at the fishes, with limited cooperation from the boy.  I had Pi on my back, and we kept stopping to look at the fish.  She liked the pretty colored ones :o

OMG are people annoying.  They kept standing like 5 in a row completely blocking paths and views.  And with Pi on my back, I couldn’t really slip through anything.  And the folks who had to surrender their strollers (it’s crowded enough as it is; we take ours to contain the boy to/from the parking deck, and to store our coats when we check it) and got the aquarium issued carriers … External frame hiking bags.  Except instead of high, they went far back.  And these people weren’t used to them.  I kept having to dodge out of the way :!

Pi enjoyed the fishes, and when DK calmed down (after going up on Kiir’s back) we went through a second time so he could actually see fishes.  And Pi could get a second round with less rushing to keep up.

They were both happy with their fishes viewing, yay!

Happy birthday, Pi girl.

Posted in: DK, PI by attriel /
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So, I’ve been on various medications for my depression.  The current one turns out to have some whacked out issues.

Whenever I miss a dose, the next morning I’m already all the way down and by mid afternoon my back/shoulder hurt.  Kindof like a spasm, but one that doesn’t start or stop.  It’s just kindof … tense.

And if I take the pill first thing in the morning, it doesn’t kick in until late evening.  Erk.

Apparently they have a very short halflife, explaining the immediate effect of missing.  And a slow release, explaining the latter issue.

And apparently the pain?  I’m lucky.  It seems this crap has psychotic withdrawal effects.  Blinding head stabbing pains.  Extreme nausea.  Some people, apparently, are stuck taking it because they just can’t get off of it reasonably.

Talking to my new psych, we’re switching me back to one I preferred even before I knew of the issues on this one.  Except, to minimize withdrawal (seriously, they prescribe a medication that has this kindof serious withdrawal effects?  but it’s not addictive! my ass) (and the old psych’s staff was so freaking nonchalant about “he’ll call you in a week or two with that emergency refill, soon a we get off our asses and tell him”???) … To minimize, we’re cutting my dosage a quarter at a time, and phasing in my new (old) med at the same time.  Which frankly sounds incredibly unlikely to work properly in terms of “average level of coverage”, but I can understand not wanting to give me two complete meds.

But it’s going to take 2-3 months to wean off this crap, and I may potentially feel this shoulder muscle pain for even longer.  What *I* can’t figure out is … if this has such a short halflife, why does the aftereffect last so much LONGER???

Posted in: general by attriel /
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I’m told I haven’t updated in a while.  About 5 weeks actually :o

See, the issue is that I usually think of something that I want to post when I’m on the train, or in a meeting, etc.  I can’t post from there, so I have to wait.  And by the time I get home/whatever, I’ve either forgotten or decided it just wasn’t that funny, actually, now I think about it more …

OTOH, if I had an iPhone, I could post from the train :o  (Actually, I may be being issued a blackberry soon …)

Posted in: general by attriel /
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Seriously, who’s in charge over there?  Ferrets with ADD?

One of the Metro stations I go through every day (it’s cold outside, dammit) has three side-by-side adboards with the SAME Ford ad.

Actually, that’s not so bad.  There are 8 at the other station that always seem to be sold as a set; most people put up two or three different ads, but one appearing three times isn’t uncommon.  Still, 3 of 3?

My big issue here is that they ads are “No. XX in a series.”  Actually, even that.  Frankly, I’d've done A, +1 and +2 or something, but whatever.

No, the ISSUE here is that they update the ad twice a day.  In the morning when I come in it’s No 23 in a Series.  When I leave it’s No 24.  The next morning, 25.  Seriously?  Twice a day you’re paying for someone to change the ad?  SERIOUSLY?  because there HAS to be a fee for changing the sign.  Even if you’ve gotten the space for six weeks or something, there’s got to be some fee.  And twice a day, the damn glue will still be setting by the time you smear the next one over.

Come ON people.  You needed funding because your business model wasn’t working.  so what do you do?  you manage to find something even WORSE???

Posted in: general by attriel /
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So, I’ve determined that the reason DK doesn’t use more than mono-sounds is the fact that he doesn’t cognitively recognize the necessity of more.  Because he CAN, in fact, do longer words.  He simply DOES NOT.

My confirmation came today when he looked at the word octopus, sounded it out, and then said Oct.  With some prodding he went to Octo.  But an hour earlier he’d asked for “caysadiya” (which, frankly, is how quesadilla would look if he tried to spell it).  So obviously he CAN use longer words.  And he can recognize that there’s more word.  But he doesn’t feel the need to enunciate it because he doesn’t have any other words that start octo.

So, I guess we need to introduce him to more words so he’ll get more collisions, in which case he’d naturally end up using full words.

Also, do normal people refer to them as hash collisions?  I wonder what a pediatrician or ped-speech would call it …

Posted in: DK by attriel /
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So, I am apparently an evil dad.  Today I decided we really needed to take down the xmas tree, so I started pulling down ornaments.  And DK started grabbing them and trying to put them back up :o

By the time I was taking down the lights, Pi had a piece of wrapping paper in her hand and just kept turning it over and looking at it, like ‘wait, what’s happening?  I liked the presents thing :(‘

Apparently after Xmas comes Evil.  And I am the embodiment of all that is evil :/

Posted in: DK, general, PI by attriel /
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So, apparently China, having been banned from using Lead in their exported toys, have switched to use Cadmium.  Which apparently they’ve been using locally for a while, and it’s cheaper than lead.  It’s also apparently more toxic (lead shows up as #2 in priority vs #7 on this list from the CDC, but it looks like the ranking is weighted by frequency of appearance, making more common lead rank high)

And, as the article below quotes, a number of companies are stating that “yeah, it’s toxic, but it’s not regulated.  *pbbbt*”  Well, OK, maybe not in those EXACT words, but dammit people!  Come on!

Washington Post Article

Posted in: general by attriel / Tags: CPSIA

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So, this is actually from August, I kept not finding a good citation for it; still can’t, so I’m taking what I can get.

In August, the CPSC voted (UNANIMOUSLY?? 3-0?  Do 3 people even get to count as unanimous?) to allow Mattel to do their own CPSIA product testing.  This is after the CPSIA was created largely due to the large number of toxic and dangerous recalls that Mattel made in 07.

Center for Environmental Health

SF Examiner

(I can find no evidence that Hasbro has succesfully end-run the legislation; so it looks like only Mattel has the Free-And-Clear card)

Posted in: general by attriel / Tags: CPSIA

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Well, no, not really.  My laundry machine appears to have decided to develop a hole.  a large hole.

Initially I discovered the floor was wet, and I assumed the drain tub clogged and overflowed.  So I took my hanger-snake and dredged it some, but not near enough to have caused that kind of overflow.  So I threw drain cleaner down it, even though that almost never helps.  Then I turned the washer back on to drain some more and it was draining GREAT.  Problem solved.

Then last night I went to carpet-shampoo-er dry out the carpets, and I threw in a load of laundry while I worked, figuring I have a bunch of stuff that needs washing, even more after it flooded the stuff that was there. (it was dirty before, but now it was REALLY dirty, plus all the towels I tried to mop it up with initially)

After an hour and a half, kiir comes to see how I’m doing, and I’m noticing that things aren’t getting much better and I decide to break off for the night, because I swear it WAS getting better earlier.  So I go to swap the laundry before going up, and uh … there’s 1.5″ of water standing in the laundry area … and the clothes in the washer are really wet …, wtf?

So I partially refill the machine so I can run it on spin to see whats leaking.  And as I look in, I can see the water level … uh … going down … while it’s off … wait just a damned minute!

So today I stayed home and vac’d up the floor and carpets (carpet is starting to smell at this point, going to need to do some real shampooing once I get it tolerably dry)

Pulled it out, and the back, where all the hoses connect, is perfectly dry and still has all the dust that 9 years in the house has given it.  So it’s leaking from the inside out the bottom.  GREAAAAT.

We have an appt with a place to come out and take a look this weekend, give us an estimate at least.  Because decent washing machines?  are apparently in the 700-1000$ range!

Posted in: house by attriel /
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