So, I have made an appointment to see the doctor for my shoulder. I am finally in enough pain that I am willing to go be told that I cannot do something essential like hold my child. I took Tylenol today and it alleviated some of the peripheral, radiating pain, but not the weird feeling that there is a knife in my shoulder. So, we are going tomorrow. Yippee. My hope is actually that Dr. Frost will give me a cortisone shot and it will miraculously go away. Ava loves Dr. Frost, because he is Caroline’s daddy, and she is a friend from Little Dippers. This caused me some intense confusion before I knew this. He started talking to Ava about Caroline, and they were in a pretty deep tête-à-tête when I pulled the nurse aside and urgently asked her what they were talking about. I find it amazing that she is not intimidated by him, since he is about 10 feet tall, but she does not seem to categorize him in the same group as other large men.

Carter yammers away now, constantly talking. We are onto “blah blah blah daaa daaa naaa neee neeee neee yaa yaahh deee deee.” I only get “mamamamama” when he is upset. But it is really funny when he does talk, because he is really loud and makes this funny face when he does it, like he is trying really hard to get his point across.

Ava, for some reason, is obsessed with cafes. I think it is because there is a story line in Richard Scarry’s book “What Do People Do All Day?” about a mouse that goes to the bookstore and then is going to go to the sidewalk café to meet her friends. Since there are very few cafes in the Adirondacks, and no sidewalk cafes at all during the winter, I have been promising her that there are lots of cafes in Austin, where we are headed in March to see Grandma. She is very excited about the possibility of going to a sidewalk café, almost as excited as she is to go see Shamu. As for myself I am VERY excited to go somewhere warm and hip. Just the possibility of seeing a bookstore, or a music store, or anything that could be filed under “alternative” is so exciting to me, I just might burst. I don’t even have to patronize said businesses. I could just soak up their vibe by driving by and watching the people go in and out. And I can’t wait to vicariously live the life of an urban hipster mom for a few weeks by watching the playground scene. And then of course there is the fact that it is Texas, which is to say that it is not NY, and thus not winter. Not to mention the sheer pleasure of not taking care of my house. YIPPEEEE! By the time we get back (mid-march), we will be that much closer to spring, and being able to play outside. And I am very curious to see if the bulbs that I planted actually grow this spring. My minor gardening successes always amaze me. Especially since I was completely unable to grow e coli in graduate school. That’s right. Fast food chains cannot get rid of it, and I can’t get the damn bacteria to grow in a delicious broth filled Petri dish while snuggled up in the warmth of an incubator. When I get a plant to actually emerge from the ground, there is no end to my wonder. And if it bears fruit—well, it is quite simply a miracle.