Monthly Archives: May 2013

City Park, Denver, CO, USA

Since Calvin is getting picky about his playgrounds, I decided I might as well play along and post profiles of the various parks we visit.

Calvin didn’t have preschool and I decided against trying to work today. So, inspired by Dr. Mike’s most recent podcast, I decided to plan some sort of outdoor activity. Originally, I was thinking of going up to the mountains but decided a mountain excursion would be better for a time when it was too hot down here.

Several months ago our family visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. As we started to drive home I caught a glimpse of an interesting looking playground next to the Duck Pond within City Park. Today, Calvin was interested in visiting a new park so I packed a lunch and we hopped into the car¹.

The playground in City Park is a whimsical wooden structure that has areas for both young and older children. The younger area is partially enclosed by a fence and contains some toddler swings, a jeep, an area to play tic-tac-toe², some structures to clamor on, and a concrete elephant.

Calvin Riding the Jeep

Calvin riding the elephant

The older kid section had several different equipment groupings that look like they’d be perfect for tag. There were also regular swings as well as an odd tire swing. Overall, the structures looked fun but the playground is definitely aging. In some places the bars had gone missing and plywood had been nailed to keep kids from accidentally falling through. At one point Calvin started shaking a railing and I stopped him because I was afraid he might manage to pull it loose.

Calvin Climbing

Summary:

Features	Wooden play structures, slides, swings, bucket swings, tire swing, rope net, jeep spring rider, monkey bars, monkey rings, balance rope
Surface Material	Bark chips
Restrooms	A large porta potty is close to the playground with several smaller ones a little bit further away.
Water fountain	Didn’t see any
Shade	The playground is surrounded by mature trees and there are several shady areas.
Picnic area	There are several picnic tables close to the playground equipment. While I didn’t see any covered picnic tables, several are shaded by dense trees.
Nearby Attractions	Duck pond, Denver Zoo, and Denver Museum of Nature and Science
Pros	Interesting multi-level playground equipment A good amount of shade Restroom nearby which looks like it’s available year-round (though it is a porta potty with no sink)
Cons	The parking is free but may be difficult to find later in the day due to the playground’s proximity to the zoo and museum The entire area is overflowing with geese so don’t plan to picnic on the lawn which is littered with feces from the geese. However, the playground itself seems free. The wooden railings are wearing out

Overall, Calvin seemed to have a good time though it didn’t keep him occupied for as long as I expected. We probably would have stayed longer if there had been more children his age.

View Random Parks and Playgrounds in a larger map

Ok, that makes it sound like it was a quick and easy process. However, nothing is that quick or easy when it involves Calvin. ↩
Is this a game little kids play? ↩

Vacation

On Friday Jaeger and Calvin left for New York City to visit Jaeger’s sister as well as doing some site-seeing. Originally, I was planning to go with them. However, 3 plane tickets are more expensive than 2 and I didn’t think all of us would fit in Bethany’s apartment, at least not comfortably. So, I told Jaeger that if he didn’t mind, I’d prefer staying home. To my surprise, he agreed. As a result, the last couple of days have been the first time, since Calvin has been born, that I’ve been by myself and didn’t really have anything scheduled that I needed to do. It’s been very, very relaxing.

I spent a fair amount of time pottering around in the yard. As I’ve probably mentioned before, our yard was loved by someone at one point but it’s gotten completely out of hand. The cat mint, which was planted on purpose, is particularly problematic. I’ve lost count of the number of hours I’ve spent yanking every shoot I can find out. I’ve been trying to get as much of the root structure as possible but it’s wily, and there’s a lot of it.

I was also planning to start digging a 4′ x 6′ x 2′ hole for a sandbox I want to get for Calvin. When Jaeger was growing he had a sandbox that was about 3′ high but 2′ of it was sunk into the ground. I was planning to do something similar for Calvin’s sandbox. However, only a couple inches down from where I was hoping to put the sandbox I struck large tree roots. Given how many trees we have on our property, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. The spot I chose is still the best spot for a sandbox. There’s nothing worthwhile there at the moment and it’s nicely shaded for hot summer afternoons. So, I’m not sure what we’re going to do. I need to talk to Jaeger about it. I suppose we could still do a 3′ high sandbox there, we’d just have to provide a ladder or something.

The project I did successfully complete is assemble our planters. Our house has a small deck at that back that goes down to a large concrete pad. The pad use to have a hot tub on it but neither Jaeger nor I wanted to deal with a hot tub so the prior owners took it with them. However, that leaves us with an awkwardly big piece of concrete. It’s not particularly good for outside dining or playing because it gets full, very hot sun¹. To add insult to injury, it’s the only place that gets full sun that good enough for tomatoes and herbs. So, we bought a couple planter kids from Naturalyards. They aren’t cheap but they were relatively easy to put together and I think they look nice. I haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with the rest of the space yet.

I went shopping on Sunday and spent way too much money of books and also bought some clothes. The rest of the time I’ve gone for walks, read, or watched DVDs. Jaeger and Calvin should arrive back from their visit tonight. It’s been very pleasant being by myself but I’m ready for Jaeger and Calvin to come back now.

We have yet another spot on the side of the house, next to where I want to put the sandbox, that works better for dining. ↩

Book Buying Spree and Reading Goal: Update 6

Today I had the luxury of spending as much time as I wanted shopping without having to hurry back home to cook supper or do some other chore. However, there is danger in having the time to thoroughly examine everything at The Bookworm and my favorite thrift store. I ended up buying 15 books.

My haul today:

The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun, by N.K. Jemisin – Ms. Jemisin is an amazing writer. I’ve been meaning to acquire the two books in the Dreamblood series for quite a while but my expenditure allocation has been a bit pinched after my piano required a major tune-up. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find her books at The Bookworm.
The View from Saturday, by E.L. Konigsburg – This book won the 1997 Newbery Medal. Calvin and I just finished listening to this as an audiobook. It seems a little old for him but he claimed to enjoy it¹.
From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E.L. Konigsburg – This book also won a Newbery, in 1968. I remember reading this when I was elementary school and loving it. Unfortunately, I don’t remember a thing about it now. However, I’ll probably read it again and count it toward my Juvenile Fiction goal.
Heart of Gold, by Sharon Shinn – I don’t think I’ve read this one before but I’ve enjoyed most of Ms. Shinn’s books so I decided to go ahead and buy it.
Summers at Castle Auburn, by Sharon Shinn – I have read this one before, I think right after I first moved to Boulder. However, I don’t remember anything about it. I vaguely recall that I enjoyed the book but it was a quick read, not very deep. Sometimes a fluffy comfort book is just what I need so I went ahead and bought it. Hopefully I wasn’t horribly mistaken. :)
Heartless, by Gail Carriger – So, it turns out I already had this book . . . I try to keep track of all of my books in my LibraryThing catalog but apparently made a mistake. I’m not sure how as Jaeger and I just did an inventory back in October and caught a huge number of books that had never been entered. However, apparently I missed this one.
Iron Kissed, by Patricia Briggs – It gets better. I bought a copy at The Bookworm and then went to the thrift store and completely spaced and bought it again. On the upside, the thrift store copy is in slightly better shape². This is one of the few paranormal series I like. Patricia Briggs writes very engrossing books.
The Sugar Queen, by Sarah Addison Allen – Sarah Addison Allen writes lovely books. I read this one a couple of years ago but remember it as a sweet book with a startling end.
What Angels Fear, by C.S. Harris – This is the first book in one of the few mystery series I really like. The series is set during the regency period in England but has a much different feel than a romance novel set in the regency period.
A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold – This is one of my favorite Miles Vorkosigan books. Miles picks out his wife but decides to woo her covertly, not even telling his prospective bride he’s interested. This results in a lot of confusion for everyone.
The BFG, by Roald Dahl – Calvin loves Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and I’ve been thinking of trying some other Dahl books but it’s hard to figure out which ones are suitible for a preschooler. A teacher at Calvin’s preschool suggested I should try The BFG so I’m going to read it and then decide whether or not I should introduce it to Calvin.
Mirror Mirror, by Marilyn Singer and Josee Masse – I don’t appreciate poetry but I feel this is a flaw so I keep trying to introduce Calvin to poetry in hopes he’ll end up more cultured than I am. This poetry picture books is very clever. On each page is one poem and then the poem lines are reversed. That is, the first line becomes the last line, the 2nd line becomes the 2nd to last line and so on. With some punctuation modification, you can end up with two entirely different poems.
Chinese-English Frequency Dictionary, by Yong Ho – I’ve been dabbling in learning Chinese characters. So far I’ve only learned 70 of the thousands so I have a long, long way to go. I picked this book up because it contains a lot more explanations about how to properly use a word than we have in the other resources we own.

Whew, on to my reading goals.

Books I gave up on (at least for now):

Realistic Fiction: The Expats, by Chris Pavone – This was an ebook and my loan ran out. I wasn’t motivated enough to check it out again³. Maybe later.
Juvenile Fiction: Into the Wild, by Erin Hunter – Another ebook I’ve given up on for now because my loan ran out.
Realistic Fiction: Sushi for Beginners, by Marian Keyes – I don’t have anything against the book, I just got distracted by other audiobooks. Maybe I’ll come back if I get desperate.

Books I’ve finished recently:

Short stories: Epic – I finished a short story anthology! I’m still not a huge fan of them but this one did have some interesting stories in it.
Juvenile Fiction: A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix – I loved this book. It feels a lot like a juvenile Heinlein novel⁴. I think I’m going to buy it because I think it’ll be a great book for Calvin when he gets a bit older. The protagonist starts as a prince who knows he’s special and better than everyone. The book is a coming of age story when the prince learns how to be a better human.
Informational: Not My Kid, by Sinikka Elliott – This was a fascinating book. It’s not a book about sex ed or the best way to talk to teens about sex. Instead, the author focuses on the parents’ perceptions of teens and sex. For the most part, the author just interviewed parents. However, there was one amusing case where she talked to a teenager with his mother. The teenager is relating the experience one of his friends had when his mother tried to broach the subject of sex, “He [the friend] was in a moving car with his mom when she asked him — she’s like, ‘I think it’s time to talk to you about sex.’ And he just unbuckled, opened, and tucked, and rolled out of the car . . . ‘”
Informational⁵: Let Them Be Eaten by Bears, by Peter Brown Hoffmeister – I really enjoyed this book. The book strongly encourages parents to provide many outdoor experiences for their children. I particularly liked the chapter of safety tips. He even provides a suggested adult to child ratio for excursions.

Currently Reading:

Juvenile Fiction: Crispin: The Cross of Lead, by Avi – I’m on vacation at the moment so I’m mostly reading fluffy stuff. However, I’ve read the first chapter or so of this book and think I’ll probably continue it. It won the 2003 Newbery Medal.

Current Goal Counts:

Category	Goal	Number Read
Best Sellers	2	1
Biography, Autobiography, Memoir	2	2
Fiction Books Jaeger Recommends	2	1
Christian Fiction	2	2
Graphic Novels	2	2
Historical Fiction	2	0
Informational	2	2
Juvenile Books	12	5 and 1 in progress
Literature	2	1
Mystery	2	0
Poetry Anthologies	2	1
Realistic Fiction	2	0
Short Story Anthologies	2	2
Total	36	19

I wish I could figure out ahead of time which audiobooks Calvin is going to enjoy. I know he must be getting something out of this book because he never hesitates to tell me to stop an audiobook when he doesn’t like one. I strongly suspect it has something to do with the narrator, or perhaps how the audiobook is produced, because he usually makes up his mind within the first 5 minutes. ↩
The Bookworm copy wasn’t bad but has a spine crease. ↩
At the moment, there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to do one-click renewals for every ebook I have checked out. I suspect I’d finish a lot more ebooks if they stayed around long enough for me to finish them. ↩
I’m dubious about some of Heinlein’s adult novels but for the most part I really like his juvenile fiction. ↩
Yes, this would be my 3rd informational but this book and the one above came in at the same time and I wasn’t sure which one I should pick for my goal so I read them both. ↩

Another Cat5 Update

Cat5 is still having problems. The feces problem has decreased, somewhat, but she’s still throwing up all over the place. Then, last week, Jaeger noticed that she had gone back to grooming herself raw. This time it was two places on the inside of her leg.

I took her to the vet again and he examined her and pondered. On the plus side, she’s still not constipated. That’s a major improvement over last year. Also, the places she’s over grooming means that her bottom isn’t particularly bothering her which is also a good sign. Our previous vet in Longmont did a lot of tests that ruled out some of the other possibilities. So, at the moment, the vet is leaning toward thinking she might have allergies of some sort that is causing her skin, and possibly bowel, problems.

One problem I have with Five is it’s extremely hard to give her medicine. She’s not a particularly smart cat but is pretty good at detecting medicine when it’s hidden in anything, including the pill pockets. I have about a 50/50 success rate when I try to brute force the pill down her throat. In addition, previously the vet prescribed a sticky gel (like hairball medicine) that you try to put in the cat’s mouth so they’ll lick it off and swallow it. I tried using it a while ago and got a little bit on the side of her jaw. Five completely ripped out all the hair on that side of her jaw. It looked like someone who had tried to shave for the first time. Completely bare skin with little red nicks all over. It was really, really disturbing. So, I stopped giving that to her.

With allergies the vet said he was thinking about trying to give her something like cortisone. This sounded like a good idea to me because back when she was doing very poorly last year, the Longmont vet had been giving her injections and that seemed to help more than anything else we tried. I mentioned that and our new vet said he was hesitant to give actual cortisone injections because apparently it can push a pre-diabetic cat into full diabetes and, unlike people and dogs, it’s hard to tell when a cat is pre-diabetic. He admitted that his opinion might be a little skewed because this is what happened with his own cat. He gave the cat a couple of shots of cortisone, triggered diabetes, and now has to give his cat insulin for the rest of its life. However, I can barely handle Cat5’s needs at the moment and I don’t think I could deal with her being diabetic.

In the end, the vet prescribed a gel solution of Prednisolone (0.1 mL Gel twice a day to start with and gradually decreasing if everything goes well). Given my experience with the last gel-like substance I was a bit leary. However, this is a different consistency and you apply it to the inside of the cat’s ear. Apparently the odds that she’ll over groom that part of her anatomy, at least to a harmful level, is low. Though, of course, I’ll monitor her closely to make sure there aren’t any problems. The vet also instructed me to try to avoid touching it and use gloves when I’m giving it to Five. It must be absorbed via the skin and the vet wanted to make sure I wouldn’t get an inadvertent dose of it. Fortunately, due to Five’s variety of messes, I always have massive supplies of latex gloves on hand¹.

I’m feeling slightly hopeful that this treatment might actually work. I’m definitely atopic and, given how many skin problems I’ve had, it just make sense that Cat5 would follow in my footsteps. So, now we’ll just wait and see. I really hope this somehow magically fixes all her problems . . .

It doesn’t matter how careful I am. If I don’t have gloves on I always manage to get some of the mess on me. ↩

Pictures of our Washington Trip

A couple of weeks ago Calvin and I traveled to Washington to see my mom. Taiwan has made me foolhardy as I now believe I can travel anywhere at anytime with Calvin and it’ll all be fine as long as we have the iPad with us. So, I booked an 8am flight which had us arriving into PDX a little after 9:30 local time. It went fine. We then went to brunch/lunch with the extended Stone family and then wandered briefly around Portland before heading to my parents’ house.

Monday we left to stay a couple of days at Canon Beach. I like to think of the Oregon and Washington coast as “atmospheric.” However, it was remarkably nice the entire time we were there. Our first day was a little windy but sunny. Calvin had fun burying himself in the sand.

Tuesday I spent the morning working while mom and Calvin went to the Maritime Museum in Astoria. In the afternoon we went to the beach and Calvin played quite a bit. The house mom had rented was “cozy.” I liked it but mom was frustrated by the lack of storage. However, we both agreed the courtyard was really nice.

On Wednesday dad came down and we went to Indian Beach at Ecola State Park. There was only a little bit of wind and it was very pleasant.

Thursday was our last day at the beach. We got adventurous and decided to take a short hike to a beach in the Oswald West State Park. Calvin really wants to go camping this summer so I convinced him that he needed to practice hiking. To my surprise, he hiked all the way to the beach and then continued walking to the far north side with only a little cajoling. Calvin wasn’t nearly as excited to hike on the way back so I carried him once we reached the trail head.

On the way back to Longview we stopped at Tapiola Park in Astoria, one of my favorite playgrounds in the world. While I love the playground, the bathrooms are quite scuzzy.

Calvin made a flying leap and grabbed onto the Monkey rings. The first time he was successful. The second time ended in tears.

So many things to play on . . .

Friday we went to the park in Longview. Saturday we went up to Hood River to visit Gramps. On Sunday we road on the Mount Hood Railroad. Though apparently I neglected to get any pictures of this (no doubt Grandma has many). Then, once again buoyed by our Taiwan experience, Calvin and I flew back home to Colorado fairly late and I crawled into bed at 12:30am on Monday morning.

Reading Goal: Update 5

I haven’t been reading as much as usual recently. I went out to Washington last week and spent the time socializing with Calvin and my mom, working, and going to bed when Calvin did. This didn’t allow much time for reading.

I only took two physical books with me and those were for Calvin on the plane. The rest were ebooks. I did get through one of them and started, but have not finished, two others. However, on the way home I got a craving to read a “real” book. I have never seen myself as being a snob that is hung up on the format of a book. I have always considered Audio books to be “real” books, perhaps even more real than print books since storytelling predates written language. However, while sitting in the Portland airport waiting for our plane I had an overwhelming urge to feel a traditional print book in my hands. As soon as we finished our supper I dragged a protesting Calvin over to Powells ¹.

After arriving at Powells I browsed the sale books and then moved toward the back of the store to peruse the SF and Fantasy books. However, nothing was speaking to me so I decided to wander over to Young Adult. On the way, Calvin convinced me to buy him Otis and the Puppy. Once we made it to Young Adult I was delighted to see that a hardback copy of Graceling was available for only $6.98. I had been meaning to buy it so I grabbed it up and happily re-read it on the plane ride back to Denver.

I would have read more this week except I got side-tracked watching Going Postal which was a British TV movie based on the fantastic Going Postal book by Terry Pratchett². I thought the TV adaption was decent. I liked some of the modifications they did but not others. I was particularly distressed by the decision to leave out Annoia, minor as her role might have been.