To "Dy" For

There she is, ladies and gentlemen. See? There is a silver (and purple!) lining to a kid with allergies.

And here's what came out of the carpet after vacuuming with the old one first.

What I learned today

• It's good to have your kids watch educational programming while preparing dinner. Nothing puts the pressure on like having Elmo & co. singing and dancing about fruits and veggies while you're staring at the fridge, waiting for something magical to happen.
• When the bug spray says that it lasts for 12 months, it means it. It was one year ago next week that we got Pappasito's (yum!) takeout to celebrate our 3rd anniversary. We finished our dinner and went to clean up, only to discover several hundred flying ants on the table. (Seriously. I screamed.) Today, they returned. I'm not sure what it is about my apartment, but I can only liken it to how the people must've felt in Hitchcock's The Birds, when they finally start breaking into the house. I could see hundreds and hundreds of winged ants milling around inside the screen, just outside the window - and they were beginning to get through. I'm not sure how, other than that they're really small. Nevertheless, I've still got the bug spray and I'm moving in a week. Happy Ant-iversary!
• When you are spraying for bugs, try not to spray the lightbulb in the lightfixture that's been on for the last couple of hours because it makes the lightbulb explode. Yeah.
• I give up on escalators.
• Much as I wish someone would nominate me for What Not to Wear, I wouldn't make good television - that and I'm not sure my fashion sense is tragic enough to be on there. It just kills me! People are upset about getting $5K to buy a whole new wardrobe and fashion consultants to hold their hands in the process? I'd be entirely too eager. In the meantime, I'll just keep rockin' that MamaFunction T-shirt style that I've got going on right now.
• Logan is exceptionally resilient.
• Dallin will walk all the time, someday. Each day he does a little bit more. It's encouraging and gives me hope that I won't be lugging him around on my hip when he's 20. He weighs 30lbs, so I don't see myself as being unreasonable in wishing he'd get going already. I'm glad that there's been progress lately.

That's what I learned today.

A new recipe blog

So I've been wanting to start a recipe blog for a while now and finally got around to it. Come see it at chopchopco-op.blogspot.com! I'm hoping that others will join in posting, but even if they don't, I'll probably toss my latest favorite up there fairily frequently. The only thing I love more than a good recipe is sharing one. Anyone who knows me knows that I love to cook and with our recent issues with food allergies, I've gotten to do even more of it! So come one over and see what we're grubbing on. Let me know if you'd like to become a contributor and I'll add you to the author list as well.

Weaving my tapestry

I was sitting here trying to think up a clever title for this entry. After about ten minutes, I figured my time would be better spent just writing. The title may come later, or it might not.

I'm not going to try to recap the entire last month and a half since my last deer-in-the-headlights entry. Far too many things have happened to even start describing them, so I will stick with the more interesting ones.

I've done a few dumb things here and there. And then there was Friday. Started out smoothly enough - got up, drove 2 hours to church, got invited to a member's home for a nice lunch. Heading out of town, I pulled my Toyota diesel pick-up into the gas station and stopped at the pump. [side note - if the green background doesn't give it away, that is not an actual photo of my truck] Well, speaking of green, in the United States, diesel fuel pumps/nozzels are colored green to distinguish them from regular fuel.

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

The station attendant put the green nozzel in my truck, and asked repeatedly, "Special? Special?" Since the nozzle was green, I assumed that in the UAE, Special means Diesel so I nodded and went inside the mini mart to snag a Red Bull for the road. Coming out, the attendant asked several more times, "Special? Special?" I started to wonder if that was the only English word he knew.

After leaving my special attendant in the dust, I headed toward the land of Desolation, but something didn't seem right, so I pulled over and called a couple people to ask the simple question: Green = Special = Diesel, right? They agreed. Apparently my English isn't very good either.

150 kilometers later (http://www.onlineconversion.com/length_common.htm), the truck started to lose power, then died altogether, and I knew I had just pulled off the most colossal blunder of my very young career. Talking to the owner of the rental company (we lease our vehicles) and googling "fill diesel tank with regular fuel" confirmed my fears: the worst thing you can do is drive it - even just a little driving can destroy the engine!!! (that would have been good to know 150k earlier) The rest of the evening I was tormented by visions of "you just threw your career path in reverse" to "hit the road, Jack!" Oh, the agony!

I believe in miracles.

What should have been $6-8 thousand for a new engine turned out to be $400 in cleaning costs with no serious damage. How the truck drove that far on the wrong kind of fuel is a mystery; how it didn't sustain irreparable damage is divine intervention.


Epilogue...
Now every time we send a vehicle in for service, it comes back with a sticker next to the fuel door: "DIESEL" in red letters, or PETROL in green letters. Hopefully that will help our special friends at the gas station. It might help the station attendant too.

EpiEpilogue...
If you've made it this far, you can agree that this story isn't nearly as fun as - "Mama, 'nother poo's hiding." Still, I do my best to pick out the unique experiences that weave splashes of color into the large, beige tapestry that is my life in the desert.