Calculating

I can see the boys playing outside in the driveway.  I like watching them when they aren't thinking about me watching.  Watching people is interesting, but it isn't staring when they're your own.  (Yes, I count Adrian as my own, loaned maybe, but my own.)  Think of the hours I've spent staring at those faces?  I can't even figure how many hours it would be.

I like to calculate things.  My favorite app right now, RunKeeper, told me that I walked 5.13 miles with Teddy today.  The only drawback to it is when I forget to turn it on at the beginning of a walk or off at the end and that's just user error.  To tell you the truth, I'd like to see my weekly totals for walking and my all-time distance.  Why? 

Remember that I said I like to calculate things?  So, if I used to walk with Indiana at least two hours a day three times a week, I could use RunKeeper to guess how much I walked during her fifteen year life.  Today, I walked about five miles in two and a half hours.  I kept getting waylaid by chatty people.  So if you extrapolate that and say that I might have walked about twelve miles a week with her on the conservative side, that could add up to 6,000 miles if I give myself a two week vacation every year and just count her productive years before she turned eleven.  That's a lot of miles!  Does Google Earth show distances?  No, but Google Maps does.  It's 3,160 miles to Portland, Maine.  So with Indiana, I could have walked to Maine and almost all the way home during her lifetime.  That's pretty good.

I want to walk around the world by the time I'm done, figuratively at least.  How far is that?  Google says that it's 24,900 miles.  I'd only have to have two other dogs that need walking after Teddy and I walk to Portland, Maine and back during his lifetime.  I don't think I'm going to make that.  Bummer!

When I was potty training Nick, I calculated that if I changed his diaper just half of the time (conservatively), I changed about 5,000 diapers.  That figure has stayed in my mind all these years.  Every single parent that is shouldering his or her load has changed five thousand diapers!  Can you picture that?  In just one small town, that's a BIG pile of diapers.  No wonder we should be using those diaper services!

There are all kinds of things I'd like to know:

What percentage of my time do I spend in my car?

How many decaf mochas will I drink using my new Krups espresso machine?  Did you ever figure those things?  When I made my first quilt on my new sewing machine, it was a $1500 quilt.  Now that I've made about 20 quilts using it, my machine only adds about $75 to the cost of each quilt.  That doesn't include all the costumes and hems I've used it for as well  Besides, my sewing machine is still humming along so that number just keeps going down and down. 

After I've spent $130 on that well-made pair of shoes that might last for eight years, how does it compare to buying the $27 pair that wore out after a couple of seasons?  No contest.  As with furniture, I buy the most expensive shoes I can afford.  Okay, I don't buy designer shoes.  That would mess up the calculation. 

How many strawberries have I eaten?

How many years have I slept?  I'd like to add some time to that total. 

How much will I pay for my house once I'm done paying for my house?  On second thought, I may not want to know the answer to that.  I did that once, figured out how much I paid for the silk sweater I loved that was half price.  Then I added in the floating interest from my credit card at 17%. I had paid 175% of the original price of that sweater.  That was when I decided to pay off my credit cards each month, twenty-eight years ago.  Think of how much money I've saved on sweaters since then!

How many peanut butter sandwiches will I make?

How many times will I hear, "Hey Mom, watch this!"

How many times will I listen for the bus on the road? 

How many hugs and kisses have I given?  I'll never know, but it's something of an investment isn't it? 

Thank you for listening, jb 

'Sploded

My espresso machine exploded.  To its credit, this espresso maker has been on my kitchen counter, making the best mochas and steamed milk for tea lattes since 1996.   It's a Krups.  When Mike gave it to me for my birthday, I was dubious.  I didn't even use it at first.  Poor Mike had to figure out how to use it and make me a mocha before I was convinced.  For a while, we bought the half gallon sized Hershey's syrup with a pump.  One day, I calculated that since I made at least half of my mochas at home, I was saving between $500 to $800 a year.  Funny how that adds up.  Eventually Mike was hooked too and that number doubled.  So then, we figured out that we could make them just the way we liked at home.  In 2005, when I was diagnosed as insulin resistant, that I couldn't tolerate any more sugar without becoming diabetic, Mike figured out how to make my mochas sugar-free using Stevia.  Then I went caffeine-free and started making tea lattes at home.  My current favorite is a decaf Stash Earl Grey tea latte with Stevia.  But today, my Krups exploded.  It was probably my fault. I'm not sure why, but I have that effect on machinery.

I was steaming milk.  Suddenly, there was a crack like a glass window being hit by a BB pellet.  I ducked, but none of the steaming milk hit me, though it splattered about a foot away on one side.  There were coffee grounds, some ash-colored stuff, and spilled milk everywhere.  Coffee grounds? 

I can't see what's wrong with it by looking at it and I don't want to turn it back on.  I let Mike do those things.  He likes fixing things that have broken.  That's what makes him a good engineer. 

There's the bus, dropping the boys off from school.

I guess this is as ordinary a day as I can get.  Even on a quiet day, I need to endure a shot of adrenaline.  I really did think the window was broken except the sound came from somewhere else. 

So the boys are playing outside the window.  I like watching them when they don't know I'm looking.  It's deep dusk out, a kind of a grayish purple.  Mike should be coming home in just a few minutes since he goes in early.  That's a plus.  I love this time of day here.  The light can be anything from gray to purple or even salmon sometimes.  Our skies are so variable. 

Maybe that's what I need to remember, that the days are colored so that every day is different.  There are no ordinary days.

Thank you for listening, jb