Happy Birthday!

After too many years away Tita can now easily come to all our family celebrations. It felt so good to have both my birthday girls home again. :-)

Cyrus and Tita played a rousing game of "Beat You to the Castle".

Mischievous little gamer intense with competitive spirit.

Meanwhile, Chacha guarded the busiest spot in the house and...

... Gabriel guarded the couch. Actually, he had returned from Cali on a red-eye and took an amazing nap. No matter how much noise we made I don't think he ever woke up.

While his dad napped this little architect was seriously considering his next move.

I know I've said it before but both the boys are great at puzzles.

I love this pic. Cyrus is helping Kai put the confounding pieces together.

Look at that face.

Shirin wanted to eat Asian noodle bowls, so I gave her the credit card and she and Tita went shopping for all the ingredients we didn't already have. They washed and chopped and sautéed for quite a while.

The end result was delicious. We also had a Tum Yum-ish soup.

A pumpkin roll served nicely as our birthday cake. Notice that 8 candles (no significance to being 8) are glowing in this picture and in the next picture...

... only 6. Kai couldn't restrain himself at the end of the birthday song and tried to blow out all the candles! Fortunately he left 6 for the birthday girls to blow out after making their wishes.

Matching twin kitty buns!

A bit more practical, some work out clothes.

Can you tell Shirin got that from Gabriel? The boys were so excited.

Tita got a really cute shirt from Shirin.

Gabriel brought some amazing toffee back from a candy store in SF. Look at those two little vultures ready to pounce! Later in the weekend David and Chacha ate the rest of it.

He also brought a superhero adventure book.

The next morning Gabriel and Kai share a tender moment before breakfast.

Saeed labored hard to prepare all the components of Persian breakfast.

Saeed and I normally don't eat cheese any more, so this was a real treat and we all enjoyed it so much.

Chacha helped me pre-wash the dishes.

After breakfast the women and children went to the Riverwalk. Tita took off and ran the full 4.5 mile loop while Shirin and I took it a bit slower. Of course she had the boys and I had Chacha but we ran a bit too. Chacha was so excited to see the water he nearly pulled me in. We were all hot and sweaty so Shirin told the boys to take off their shorts so they could wade in the water and they were more than happy to do that.

There was also no chance of taking a serious picture!

Tita had never actually seen Chacha swim before, but I caught it on tape. Shirin took the boys out to that rocky strip until Tita and I harassed her about going out too far with the boys. Chacha ended my filming abruptly as I had to turn off the camera to catch him! It was a very exciting weekend for all.

Clear Margins

I got my stitches out yesterday and received the happy news that he got it all; the margins of the excised tissue were clear. I have to continue covering with ointment and non-stick pads through Saturday and then still be very careful for six weeks. The strength of the closure is only 5% of what it will be in six weeks, so no screw driver motions or heavy bags hanging on it. I can do that. The moisture from the ointment has made my skin under the bandage pruney. Ever wondered why our skin puckers after prolonged exposure to water/moisture? Read here. I have to go now; I have to go uproot some wet plants.

Feline Pranks

I should know better than to leave out a roll of paper towels. Lupe always wrestles & rabbit kicks them. This time the culprit was Banu.

She didn't seem too concerned about being caught.

Perhaps remorse set in and she hid in a box.

Uh oh. Mommy found me. Busted.

It's A Bird... It's A Plane... It's Sciurus carolinensis

First take a look at this picture and see if you notice anything:

Enlarged:

We had fun this spring watching an Eastern Bluebird couple raise a brood in what is actually a squirrel feeder on one of our sweet gum trees. They are long gone but I noticed someone else in there recently. He was so cute and hung out in there for several hours but haven't seen him in there since.

Back Yard Changes

My yard boy has been working steadily on our yard for years. I had to go back to find a few pics of the back yard jungle so the difference could be appreciated.

First you must admire the lamp post he put up. I was complaining that coming home at night the sidewalk to the back door was too dark, leading to possible falls or snake surprises. Saeed did a nice job of installing this with an electric outlet box at the base.

He also wrote in his name (Baba) and Cyrus' name in the cement. Sorry Kai, you weren't born yet. Next time Baba has a cement project your name will be written in.

A series of shots of the back yard...

...

...

... and our then neighbor's dog walking on the stone "path".

After much planning the project began in the summer of 2012. The underbrush was removed...

... and the land was flattened and sloped more evenly.

The edges were carefully placed...

... and the cement carefully poured.

Ta da!!!

Shortly after the concrete dried we had some little visitors:

The next step was to cover all the areas with black landscaping material to prevent overgrowth once again. This is the Amazon after all.

Looks like someone's back hurts. :- (

I don't have a picture of the back yard once the chips were down but in March I video taped some snow falling and you can see the finished product with the two different colored wood chips.

And this is how it looks today. The black borders still need to be finished and the leaves need to be blown but it's nice. Very nice, yard boy.

Dr. Greger's Newest Fan

I love Dr. Greger and his mission to disseminate the latest accurate medical information regarding the role of nutrition in disease prevention. I've sent many of his videos to my family members over the last couple of years and they, in turn, have shared them others. Someone recently told me that food is for enjoyment, not to be used as medicine referring I think to Hippocrates' statement "Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food."

Why can't it be for both? I usually enjoy healthy food and don't think it has to taste bad just because it's good for us although I'd give Dr. Greger my right arm, the one with the stitches in it, if he'd say potato chips and ice cream were healthy foods.

So I was happy to come home from work today to find Obi watching one of Dr. Greger's recent videos. I had to help him understand some of the terms, but he really seemed to like it.

Here's today's video:

I'm Glad He's Back

My better half has been gone for 10 days visiting family on the other side of the country. His trip home was a bit too eventful. After one and a half hours in the plane on the ground it was determined that the malfunctioning pressure gauge couldn't be fixed and they had to go back to the terminal. The only sure way to get home by the next day was to reschedule on other flights which in this case involved three flights with two fairly big layovers. He ended up flying (or waiting to fly) all night and got back here at 9 the next morning. Needless to say he was toast. He ate a little bit of something and then took an eight-hour nap. Four hours later he was ready to go to bed at the normal time and slept all night.

Today when we woke up the weather was gorgeous so we went to the Riverwalk to commune with nature and allow Mr. Vacation to get back on his exercise regimen.

 The Catawba River runs along the walking trail.

Although he's been walking at the "Y" he hadn't yet done the Riverwalk since his back surgery. The walking path has some fairly noticeable inclines and the fact that we did over 2.5 miles is quite the testament to his recovery. Prior to his surgery his feet would have been numb by mile marker 0.25.

A little bit sweaty but feelin' GOOD!

He insisted on snapping my pic too.

When we got home we were both famished and together we made tabouleh with quinoa instead of Bulgar wheat and tofu steaks coated with Bragg's and nutritional yeast. Yum. I eat so much better when he's home; it's a group project. I'm glad he's back.

My Ten Little Stitches

I took a look at my incision for the first time this morning and decided it wasn't too bad. It's been a bit sore but certainly not painful. It's about 1 1/2 inches long and his stitches look so neat & tidy and evenly spaced. I owe my thanks to the drunks he practiced on all those years ago.

Excision Of Squamous Cell Carcinoma

I had an area removed from my right arm today; the procedure went really well. My derm is a graduate of MUSC and was chief resident. As he was numbing, excising, and

stitching I told him the story of my daughter in vet school trying to practice suturing on a sponge. He laughed and said he did all his practicing on live humans. He worked in the ER during med school and volunteered to do all the stitching of the drunks who came in with lacerations so he could get as much experience as possible. The advantage was that they didn't need quite as much Novocaine because they were already "feeling no pain" (I think he was kidding about that) and the disadvantage was that they would sometimes move involuntarily and compromise his sterile field. His supervising assured him that the gin bottle that sliced open the patient's hand probably wasn't sterile either and he would be getting antibiotics anyway, but my doc said he wanted to do it perfectly. I'm glad about that. I won't get to see it till tomorrow night when I change the bandage and hopefully it won't look like he took a machete to it (ha ha.) I go back in two weeks to get my stitches removed.

I decided not to share with him that Jerry Seinfeld thinks dermatologists are just pimple popper MDs. :-)

Seinfeld References Have Taken Over My Brain

Sometimes funny things happen during patients' exams, things that you absolutely cannot laugh out loud about. Today it wasn't anything the patient said or did; it was just that it reminded me of a Seinfeld episode.

The patient was very plain looking, I mean very plain, like the stereotypic librarian in a sitcom: straight medium-length mousy dark blonde hair, no makeup, pinched nose, bookish glasses... you know the look.

So it really threw me when I saw that she was sporting a shiny metal stud ring in an area that would seem very painful to me, if you know what I mean. I thought of that Seinfeld episode where he can't remember the name of the girl he's dating. He tries to find out by asking surreptitious questions like, "Did people ever make fun of your name?" and she answers, "Are you kidding, they were merciless, what do you expect when your name rhymes with a part of the female anatomy?" Jerry and George spend the rest of the episode trying to figure it out - Bovary? Gipple? Mulva?  - and only at the very end does he realize what it must be and yells out the window "Deloris!"

I guess that old saying is right, you can't judge a book by its cover. My librarian had a stud in her deloris!