My deepest, darkest secret

November 10, 2010 By

I got the MRI results back for my knee last week. The results did not surprise me. The commentary did. The official report from the lab:

History:
Medial meniscus tear. Medial compartment degenerative change.

Findings:
A small amount of joint fluid is present, within physiologic range. There is heterogeous bone marrow signal in the metaphyseal regions; this is a common finding in menstruating females.

To summarize?

1) In addition to my arthritis, I have a meniscus tear in my knee.

2) I am a menstruating female.

And apparently this is a common finding. WHEW!

I need Arthroscopic surgery to repair the torn meniscus. This is allegedly a pretty standard procedure with a recovery of about 6 weeks(though full recovery will take longer than that.)

Thus begs the much more difficult question: when to do it. I’ve been experiencing pain for well over a year now but have been able to maintain my lifestyle by hiking and biking every day (though running and volleyball are definitely out).

But our schedule is kinda tricky. Jamie and I are heading out on a cruise next week (aboard the Norwegian EPIC!), I need to be in Park City for a conference the beginning of December, then there’s Christmas and we also have numerous ski trips planned including Telluride, Echo Mountain and Crested Butte.

Right now, mid-February is about as soon as I can swing it. Maybe I’ll even do it on the 20th–my birthday.

I’ve already had lice as a birthday present.

Comparatively, a new knee sounds pretty darn swell.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Health, Humor

The new standard of birthday excellence

November 9, 2010 By

At church, I work with the 12- and 13-year-old girls. Though my responsibility is to teach on Sundays, I try to attend their weekly Tuesday night activity at the church when I have a chance.

Since Jamie is in the Bishopric, he has to attend meetings that evening so I always have the kids in tow.

I arrived last week to discover the youth disbanding to various cars to collect food donations for Thanksgiving. Knowing my kids wouldn’t want to be dragged around, we invited ourselves to another ward (congregation’s) activity.

I’m all about letting the best ward win.

Behind our church is a smattering of trees. So lovely is this grove that many people (including my classy sister-in-law Tammy) have their wedding receptions here.

Muchos trees also = muchos leaves.

For a service project, the teen-age boys from my friend’s ward chose to rake the grove, which is no small feat.

We chose to reap the rewards of their labors and spent an hour jumping, racing and burying ourselves in the piles.



Oh yeah, and inviting ourselves to warm ourselves on that dark, chilly night with their hot chocolate.

On Saturday, Bode was invited to a birthday party at his friend Noah’s house. When I arrived, his mom Sam said, unbeknownst to me, that Hadley was invited as well. I returned home to extend the invite but by that time, she was head-deep in pumpkin goop so declined.

When I retrieved Bode a couple of hours later, the boys were attacking a pile of leaves. Hadley was not pleased with their choice of activity.

“NOBODY TOLD ME THERE WOULD BE LEAVES INVOLVED AT THAT BOY’S PARTY!”

Leaf-jumping: the new standard of birthday excellence.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, Humor

Saturday is a special day

November 8, 2010 By

Saturday marked the end of soccer season (glory, praises Hallelujah).

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy being part of the soccer mom tribe. It’s just the season seemed so dang long and by the end of it, there were a thousand different ways I would have preferred to spend my weekend. It gives me new appreciation for my folks who raised three athletic kids and attended all of our sporting events through high school.

It’s gonna be a long haul.

Bode was a pleasure to watch, attacking the ball and averaging a few goals a game. Hadley, on the other hand, regressed as the season went on. By the last game she acted downright scared of the ball.

This, from the most spirited, aggressive kid I know who throws a colossal fit whenever her brother beats her in Sorry (which is often).

I’m not discouraging her from playing again but am gently encouraging her to explore other options. She’s an ace at skiing and hiking and loves the water so I’m thinking swim team may be in her future.

This, from the mother who hates to get her face wet.

Haul=long. But it’s worth it.

=================

On another [long-haul] note, last weekend marked the end of Pumpkin Season 2010. The Great Pumpkin has been sitting in our driveway for the past month and Jamie took a saw to it on Saturday. The process is tedious and long. After salvaging the seeds (to trade with other growers), he cut it up, put it in a thousand trash bags and plans to compost it in the patch.

Ever wondered what the inside of The Great Pumpkin looks like?

Big enough to eat a small child, for sure.

As Haddie and Jamie gutted it, I went to the store. As I was backing out, I followed my usual path, not realizing The Great Pumpkin was now in my way.

I may-or-may-not have run into it.

And it may-or-may-not have been the highlight of my season.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Humor, pumpkins

Top Picks errr…Pics of the Week

November 3, 2010 By

Check out my darling twin nieces on Halloween.
(Nevermind that wild rabbits are our neighborhood pest and Jamie is constantly threatening to “break their necks” for destroying our yard.)

I finally took a picture of Bode that I love. In case you couldn’t tell, he is going through a rough patch as it pertains to smiling in pictures. As in he can’t do it. Cases in point:

At the Denver Aquarium.

On the first day of school.

In the Outer Banks.

Well, you get the picture.

And that picture ain’t smiling very well.

However, the other day I finally got one that I love. The weather has been glorious here (mid-60s, my ideal temperature). After preschool, we’ve been hitting the playground and going on many outdoor adventures.

Yesterday, we had stick sword fights along Clear Creek, trekked through our favorite secret passageway to collect branches and leaves for fall decorations and threw 100 rocks in the river. After this precious shot of Bode counting the stones, I inadvertently nailed a duck.

That’s gotta count for some bad karma.

On Monday, we biked to a water tower that is perched over our neighborhood. After stashing our bikes in the ditch, we hiked to the top where we played hide-and-go-seek, threw more rocks and counted the clouds. I’m not sure how long we were up there but it felt like hours as we both experienced a high we never wanted to come down.

As he gazed out upon the undulating landscape, I asked him to turn around to me, at which time I captured his very essence in a moment when he least expected it.

Joy.

And it made all those other unphotogenic moments totally worth it.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Humor

The Great Pumpkin’s Mushroom Kingdom

November 2, 2010 By

Halloween is almost anti-climactic after all the pumpkin patches, parties, weigh-offs and trunk-or-treats.

This year, the kids opted for a Mario Bros. theme. Bode’s hero is Mario and Hadley begged to be Yoshi, his sidekick dinosaur. Bode’s costume was easy: I went to the local thrift store where I found overalls and a red shirt. I bought the actual Mario hat from the Halloween store.

I’ll admit I wasn’t too thrilled about Yoshi so when I couldn’t find a costume in Hadley’s size, I proposed she dress up as Princess Peach, the damsel in distress in Mario’s ficticious Mushroom Kingdom.


Just pretend they are posing with The Great Mushroom.

If you know Hadley’s aversion to all things princess, you would realize what a risky move this was. Somewhere, at sometime, a princess did her wrong and these royal wenches represent all that is evil in the world.

Fortunately, due to her affection for Mario, she made the exception to be Peach.


Though she did have the pageant girl wave down at her school parade.

On Saturday, we had a busy day with soccer games and a playdate with Aunt Lisa while Jamie and I auditioned at the Marriage Ref. That night was the trunk-or-treat at the church. Knowing they would get loaded up on sugar, I fed them a healthy dinner. Thirty seconds prior, Bode professed to be starving to death and proceeded to eat half his weight in food.

“My tummy is sooooo full,” he moaned.

I thought he was exaggerating until it was time to go to the trunk-or-treat an hour later. He refused, with the same complaint.

“Bode, don’t you realize you’re going to go to a place where they are going to stuff you full of candy?” I queried.

“Don’t care. My tummy is too full.”

I don’t know how a kid like that came out of me.

He bounced back on Halloween and we joined our neighborhood revelries with a fire-truck-led procession, followed by trick-or-treating.




The local Medved dealership sponsored our parade and brought this Camero. It was love at first sight for the Lord of the Gourds.

Please don’t ask me how many times he made me retake this photo in order to best showcase his dream car.

As you can imagine, visiting the house of The Great Pumpkin makes us a VERY popular stop for picture-taking.

Next year, I’m charging a fee.

All these were fun times but my favorite moment came earlier that day when I attempted to clean up the house. As I swept the kitchen floor, the Lord of the Gourds commented:

“You’re the best looking thing with a broom today.”

‘Bout time someone recognized it.

Happy Halloween!

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Bode, Hadley, holidays, Humor, Jamie, pumpkins Tagged With:

Battling it Out at Denver’s Marriage Ref Auditions

November 1, 2010 By

On Saturday, my husband Jamie and I were invited to audition for the Marriage Ref, Jerry Seinfield’s brainchild on NBC.

No, Mom. We’re not on the brink of divorce but we need a comedic mediator for our ongoing dispute:

Jamie’s all-consuming obsession with growing The Great Pumpkin.

The whole thing unfolded almost by accident. When I was driving to my daughter’s Halloween Party on Friday, the hosts of Alice 105.9 were talking about the Marriage Ref’s auditions in Denver that weekend. Casting directors were looking for humorous squabbles that could be resolved by their celebrity panel.

I listened with moderate interest but then something clicked. The inordinate amount of time Jamie spends nurturing The Great Pumpkin is a kooky dispute, on par with past Marriage Ref episodes that included Fonzie the stuffed dog and a stripper pole in a bedroom.

I am not proud of this.

The show had open-call auditions at a few different locations. I did not want to stand in line for hours so tracked down a few different emails of casting agents who were scheduling auditions. Though they assuredly had a flood of emails, I figured I would hear back if it was meant to be.

And I did. Later that day, a casting agent contacted me and then the actual casting director emailed later that night. They scheduled us for Saturday afternoon and instructed us to bring props so we compiled every insane picture and newspaper article we could find.

Turns out we didn’t need them. One picture of The Great Pumpkin testifies to our insanity.

I thought I had this argument in the bag with well-rehearsed talking points and humorous anecdotes but my beloved James had some great rebuttals of his own, resulting in a fun and thought-provoking debate.

The woman doing the interview loved our quirky topic. She said we nailed the audition and made it past the first round. So now we wait. Our main challenges for being chosen:

1) Pumpkin season is over so getting video of the soon-to-be destroyed pumpkin is a challenge. They asked us to film some footage of it on our Flip camera and send it to them.

2) Somebody else is growing The Great Pumpkin and has our same issues with an even greater degree of hilarity.

If chosen to appear on the Marriage Ref, we would receive an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to be on the show and a generous prize package (last season was a second honeymoon/week-long cruise). Four different couples appear in each episode and the couple the audience deems the “most right” wins $25,000.

Fingers are crossed that will be me.

© Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck–A Denver Mom’s Blog
Filed Under: Humor, Marriage, Marriage Ref, pumpkins
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