Memnison Journal

As you can imagine, the champions (my Mere and her pairs partner Eric) are in seventh heaven – as I write this, Susan and Mere are on their way home to us, bearing a new gold medal.   And, of course, all their stuff. The last year, in dealing with Mere getting serious on roller-skating competitive [...]

Meredith and Eric took first place at the National Championships with a flawless, beautiful performance… stunned the people online and the commentators with **OMG WHO ARE THESE GUYS!!!** reactions. They can’t go to World Championships until the elder is 14, which is next year. But my god, they were the best I’ve ever seen them, [...]

Went to the podiatrist/surgeon on Monday, and he’s leaving in the stitches for longer – I’m a slow healer, and there’s a couple of small gaps in the thing. He’s switched over to a much smaller bandage thing, essentially enough to cover the incision, and has to be redone every day with special silver gel [...]

Susan and Meredith are supposed to leave tomorrow in the morning for Lincoln, Nebraska, to the roller-skating National competition, and they will have to work really hard to be ready by then. I worry about Susan burning the candle at both ends mentally and physically with this trip, but there’s darn little I can do [...]

Thanks for all the good wishes, prayers and thoughts! The pain in my left foot is a LOT less, and I now have my roll-about knee walker, so I’m more mobile to get around inside the basement and out to the driveway – but it’s hot enough that I don’t much feel like doing so. [...]

I’m finally over a horrible upper respiratory cold that knocked me around quite a bit – with a nasty dry cough that seemed to go on forever. It pretty much levelled me for weeks on end and took a huge chunk out of my general stamina. Everyone else in the house has been felled by [...]

Mere, who recently saw YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES and really dug it, has really wanted to see the new SHERLOCK HOLMES movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law.  Everyone else in the house wants to see it, but we’re not sure as to whether it’s really appropriate for the little mystery junkie. Same situation with [...]

Christmas Eve is usually the day we spend with Susan’s aunt and mom at Susan’s aunt’s house in the  northwestern suburbs of Chicago; dinner is followed by passing out the presents (a small child is usually too excited to sit through dinner in any sort of relaxed fashion, and is the elf who supervises the [...]

This year we decided to buy a big household present for everyone rather than a lot of stuff (of course, Mere still makes out, but…) so the big add was a combination of an HD TV for the living room, and a  HD TiVo and a Blu-Ray player to go with it. This is changing [...]

Meredith’s 10th birthday (and that of her twin sister Mer, of course) is today, and we are having a series of birthday parties for her; the first included Susan’s aunt(s) at their home in Elgin over the weekend, and the next is a just-the-household one tonight, and then this Saturday night, Mere has five pals [...]

The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading.  It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff. Tastes run [...]

Back home last night; feeling logy and icky today and sleeping most of the day.  Meredith seems to be getting out from under the strep throat, Susan seems to be coming down with it, and Connie’s leaving today for out of town till Saturday or so (long-expected absence, but a horrible time for it).  I [...]

There’s no HD TVs in the house, but Comcast is forcing us to go ahead and get digital cable boxes for the TVs that don’t have them…unless we only want the local channels.   They’re not charging us for the boxes, they claim, but I bet they’d charge $5 a pop for ‘renting’ them. My greatest [...]

Both of the kids do, indeed, have sinus infections (probably as a result of their not taking care of themselves with bad allergic sinus reactions to pollens, etc.) and both are sick and cranky.   And both are on antibiotics; Mere still can’t handle pills, so we end up trying to see what we can get [...]

I don’t take my Kindle everywhere, but it has gotten a lot of use, especially when i know I’m going to have to sit and wait somewhere.    (Like at the hospital.)    Susan and Meredith have used it a little, as has my niece Kay and my mother-in-law, and it looks like we’re getting another Kindle [...]