going to the dogs

You may have heard that the Obamas got a new Portuguese water dog, Sunny, to join their older Portuguese water dog Bo.   (I poached this photo from the internet - I think Bo is on the left and Sunny is on the right.)

Jimmy's been attending meetings at the Old Executive Office Building (next door to the White House) in his new job and the other day, the dogs were playing on the lawn while he was walking in or out of the building.  And he saw them.

And petted them.

Petted them.  Did you read that correctly?

This makes me incredibly jealous because you know I'm a stalker of all people (and dogs) who are famous.  In fact, I think I learned about the new puppy on people.com which I check with a frequency that I don't care to admit to you.

Jimmy didn't get to take a picture.  That was the morning he left his Blackberry at home and I had to drive it in to the District to drop it off at his office.

While he was playing with the puppies.

That's how we roll around here.  He gets to cavort with the President's dogs (which I'd already tried to spot frolicking on the White House lawn when I death marched my cousin's husband Jeff and Mac around the White House when it was about 112 degrees a few weeks ago.)  And I get to play cleanup, spending 40 minutes in rush hour traffic to deliver a cell phone.

Good thing I didn't have anything more pressing to do that morning.  I must have been all caught up on my people.com reading for the day...

and one other thing

Three days in a row at the gym.

Do I look skinnier yet?

moldy yogurt

We had sandwiches at home for last Sunday's lunch.  I ate a half sandwich so I could eat a double triple portion of BBQ potato chips.  Then I rounded that off with a cup of Chobani yogurt with fresh raspberries and blueberries.  A little junky but a lot healthy.

As I was eating the Chobani, I notice some fizziness in the yogurt that seemed odd.  I also thought there was a weird mouth taste, but I really chalked that up to lingering BBQ chip taste mixing with the yogurt, which could really border on disgusting.

After lunch Jimmy and I went to the grocery store and my lips felt numb.  I thought that perhaps I was having the first allergic reaction to something in my life, so I asked Jimmy to make sure I wasn't turning blue or my lips weren't puffing up.  All looked normal, and eventually the numbness went away.

Fast forward to Wednesday when I heard a report on the Today Show that said there was a problem with mold in some Chobani yogurts.  The telltale sign pre-opening the yogurt was swollen and bloated packaging and post-opening was fizzing yogurt. That's so gross, especially because that's exactly what I ate on Sunday.

I immediately threw out the three cups we still had in the fridge (that definitely had bloated packaging), but I checked the new package of eight little cups I'd just bought on Sunday and they seemed fine.

And then this morning, I opened the Washington Post to see this:

Since I now had a concrete code to check for, I immediately went to the fridge to check the unopened, still-in-the-cardboard-packaging yogurt.  (For the record, once one believes they've eaten moldy yogurt, it's hard to muster the enthusiasm to eat more of the same product.  Hence the unopened yogurt five days after purchase).

When I opened the fridge, I notice there were white gunk dried on the butter compartment of the fridge door.  I wondered if Mac or Jimmy had spilled something and not cleaned it up, but how would they have spilled something there?

Then I realized that the white gunk was yogurt from a cup of yogurt whose cup got so bloated that it exploded when it finally pressed too hard against the cardboard wrapping holding the whole package together.

For the record, that makes me want to vomit.

I threw the whole package out and will have to think long and hard before I can eat any Greek yogurt again, much less Chobani Greek yogurt.

Maybe I'll go back to Activia with those probiotic cultures.  Perhaps those live cultures eat the bad mold in the yogurt as well as in your stomach????

today's sign that the apocalypse may be upon us...

I have been to the gym for two days in a row.

Yes, you read that right.

Today, I even used those weight machines after doing the treadmill. But that was only because nobody was in there to see me embarrass myself.

I hate gyms, but I hate this flab more, so I stepped foot in a gym yesterday for the first time since we left Sao Paulo (4 years ago).

Unless I can find a cheap tennis instructor like I had in Bogota before I started the J-O-B, I am stuck in this godforsaken place called a gym.

Sigh.

(In happier news, Mac seems very content to be going to school, thanks to the buddy he met on the first day.)

P.S.

Mac did not take the bus.

Sigh.

He told me this morning that we'd discussed this already, but I must have tuned out to that part of the conversation yesterday.  Since we won't have bus access once we move to our new apartment anyway, I've decided not to fight this fight.  I will be the bus service from now until we move at which point, we walk or bike to school!

it was a great day

The day finally dragged on until - finally - it was time to pick up Mac.  I did get to the parking lot 30 minutes before release, but I promised him I wouldn't be late.  (The waiting at the apartment was killing me so I figured reading in the parking lot would be a diversion.)

The school sends out the extended day students first so they can get to the right part of the building.  Then the bus students come out and finally, the pick-up students are released to their waiting parents.  Except Mac never came out.  I asked the teacher's assistant I recognized from Open House if Mac's class had been released and she wasn't sure.  Then I asked another teacher and she said that the 5th graders were released from the front of the school, so I ran around to the front, only to be told that no, all students are released from the other side.  So I ran back around and the teacher's assistant said she'd go to his classroom to see if he was there.

At this point, school had officially been out for 15 minutes.  There was nobody left waiting for pick-up except that one poor first grader whose parents hadn't shown up yet.  Naturally I was in a state of hyper-DEFCON 1 and mentally had Mac crying on the bathroom floor by now, his teacher totally unaware that he'd been missing from the classroom since 9am.  I'm not going to lie.  I was nearly crying in the parking lot.

The assistant came right out with Mac, who was smiling big if not a little sheepishly.  He thought that he'd be picked up in the classroom so he'd just hung out there with a couple other kids.  I nearly collapsed with relief to see him in general and to see him so happy specifically.

He had a great day.  Of the 27 kids in his class (boy, do we miss the 16-18 total in his classes at CGB!), three were new.  Mac hung out with one of the new boys, whose family has just been transferred here with the military.  The two of them were friended by a returning student, who was able to show them the ropes.  He said the other kids in the class were friendly and talked to him, his homeroom teacher LOVES books and has a great class library of "about 200 books that she bought all by herself for us to read", there's a laptop or desktop for every kid in the class, he had PE today and one of the PE teachers is a Georgia fan so they smack-talked about the USC-Georgia game this weekend, there are 10 mini iPads in the gym (WHY?), his lunch was good but I packed too much food, and on and on and on.

He's planning to ride the school bus - another first, the big yellow school bus - on day 2.  We'll see if that plan is still valid when he wakes up.

For the blessings of prayers that were answered loud and clear, I am truly thankful.

a day that'll break a mama's heart

Mac started school this morning.  And while normally this is a day for celebration - especially since I'm not working and should be able to do whatever I want all day today - he was so pathetic when I dropped him off that my heart is in about 4 million pieces right now and all I've done so far is get my vehicle emissions test done, buy him a red velvet cupcake for an after-school treat, and vacuum the apartment.  I have checked my watch at least 7 times in the  2 hours that school has been in session and time is nearly standing still. All I can imagine is him in a bathroom stall, crying.  I tend to be a DEFCON 1 sort of person and have convinced myself that he's having the worst day of his life.

As our first foray into American public school, where most of these kids have been together since K-5, this is going to be his toughest start yet.  International schools are better primed for new students since the annual turnover is so high.  They make a big deal of welcoming new students.  But these kids?  They've all got their buddies and don't really care about a new kid.  I don't have great confidence that the teacher will push for a welcoming committee either.  Not one child spoke to Mac at the Open House last week (except for when I spoke to them directly) and nobody spoke to us this morning.  It's a tough start.

Ever since Mac started school, we've told him to seek out the new kids, to invite them to play on the playground, to introduce them to other students, to help them if they look lost or sad.  And by all accounts from parents and teachers, he's done just that.  Could Mac please have good karma today?  Could we please have a positive case of "what goes around, comes around"?

Last night at dinner we talked about what would make today the best first day ever at his new school.  Mac's answer:  "if somebody talks to me".

I have begged the Lord today and yesterday and the days before to please, please, please let somebody be nice to him.  Now I add "talk to him" to the prayer.  If Mac crosses your mind today, please send positive vibes his way.  We need them.