Creative titles are getting harder

My cold diminishes, but still lingers. I think. It's actually kind of hard to be sure. I'm still sometimes congested or have a runny nose, but I think I had some of that now and then for unexplained reasons even before I got a cold. It's been long enough (I think nearly a month?) that it's hard to remember now. I'm also starting to wonder if some of my general ill feelings in my head are really just dehydration. My opinion of Emergen-C and other similar electrolyte drinks is that they're in the normal case kind of nasty -- but that if they taste good, that's a sign that you really need them. So over the past few days I've started drinking repeated double doses of Emergen-C, and it's been hugely satisfying. After having the remnants of a box lingering around since the last time I went to Burning Man, I quickly plowed through it and had to go out and buy more yesterday.

Yesterday was the first day of week 2 with no stomach cramping, so I'm hoping that I've put that behind me until the next round.

Waking up early and not being able to get back to sleep is no longer an issue, although last night was the first night this round that I had the flip side of the coin, trouble falling asleep. I think perhaps it's late enough in the cycle now that I need to just lay off the sleep meds and get used to sleeping normally again. Hopefully a couple of days will take care of any short term dependence/tolerance with respect to that.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a private yoga session on Thursday. Julia, who has been leading yoga classes for a little while now at Location Labs (my workplace a little while back sort of changed its name from Wavemarket), offered to come by our house for a private session. It went well. For a while I was hoping that I could soon jump back into just some regular yoga classes (e.g. not anything special like the yoga for cancer patients offered at the cancer center), as long as they were reasonably low key and geared for beginners. But I'm going to have to think about that a little bit more. Our practice on Thursday was *very* low key, but still I felt like it took a pretty serious amount of energy for me, and I definitely needed to take it at a very slow pace. I'm still feeling a little bit sore (although in a good way), although part of that is probably that I've also been trying to do some more biking (again, pretty low key, not heading way up into the hills).

Rich in the backyard, by the blooming
wisteria, with his wide brimmed Panama hat

As the week progressed, the weather kept getting warmer. So on Friday, we all headed to Ocean Beach. It never ceases to amaze me how much traffic can suck in the Bay Area, even in the middle of a weekday. We did eventually make it there, and indeed the weather was pleasant even all the way on the coast. I think it was Dylan's first time actually at the ocean since he was just a few months old. Although he's come very close to the ocean a few other times, like here (he just wasn't able to make it down the final cliff in that case). Dylan got to try out the new beach shovel and bucket that we bought for him. And he made friends with a fellow toddler who is equally as obsessed with balls as he his. None of us actually went into the water -- despite the warm air temperature, the Pacific Ocean in Northern California is pretty damn cold in April.

Dylan at Ocean Beach, with his
new beach shovel and bucket

On the way back, we hit still more traffic way before we could even come close to the highway, so we decided to just stop in Golden Gate Park and hang out and wait it out a while. As we're walking to the area around Hippy Hill, we see a pretty huge crowd of people, and hear a sound system, and assumed that it must be a free concert or something. Nope, it was just 4/20. While Dylan was not particularly concerned with the significance of the holiday, he did get to enjoy what is a pretty awesome playground that's in the park.

Dylan with his new buddy at the beach who is also ball
obsessed. Sometimes Dylan needed to be reminded to share.

Saturday was even warmer, and our plan was to go to the pool that's right around the corner from our house at the King Middle School. There aren't too many sessions that are just open for anyone until the summer arrives. Nevertheless, there was a session for a couple of hours on Saturday, which was the hottest day. Sadly, we collided with the reality of there being too many damn people around here. We didn't show up until about halfway through the session (coordinating with naps and eating time is non-trivial with a toddler), and by then they said they were full and taking people on a wait list. We hung around for a little bit but then just gave up. I suppose it's better than them letting the pool get crazy crowded (it's a pretty small pool), but it was still kind of annoying and disappointing. There used to be 3 public pools in Berkeley, but several have closed and right now there's only 1 (I think another one will be open in the summer), which probably contributes to the crowd. Not to mention the ridiculously unseasonably warm weather -- obviously we weren't the only ones with the same idea.

Dylan and Daddy going down a slide in Golden Gate Park

Our backup plan was to go for a bike ride. But by the time we were able to realistically consider that (more toddler nap and eating scheduling issues), it was late enough in the day that I was starting to not feel all that well -- not really well enough (or awake enough) for a bike ride. As well as the fact that I concluded that it was beyond warm and into hot -- or at least how I'm perceiving things right now, which seems to be more sensitive to extreme temperatures (both hot and cold) than normal. On the assumption that Sunday was going to be pleasantly warm but not so hot, we postponed the ride for a day, and instead went for a walk up to Indian Rock. Dylan was much less mobile the last time we were there, but thankfully we managed to prevent him from launching himself off of the rock.

Dylan navigates the steps up to the top of
Indian Rock, with a little assistance.

Our plan for a Sunday bike ride ran into the realities of Bay Area weather. No more warmth, back to the usual cold, wind, and fog. We went for a ride anyway. And while it was good to get out and use the bike trailer again (it had been a little while), it was somewhat shorter and not quite as much fun as I had hoped.

My previous rejoicing at gaining weight has been mellowed somewhat. I think maybe when I topped 140# I reacted by starting to eat a bit more normally, and not just piling on calories by any means necessary. In retrospect, I think it was all temporary water weight, and yesterday morning I dipped below 130# again (129.4). Partly due to the diminished weight gain, and partly inspired by the warm weather, I made ice cream this weekend. Cinnamon ice cream with pralined oatmeal. Yum. Unfortunately, homemade ice cream has a few steps with some significant latency between them (this style and variety, at least), and by the time I actually had the ice cream all made, the warm weather had passed. So this morning I took some ripe bananas and made banana bread. Oh yeah, and there's also 1/4 of the dough from the ginger snaps that's in the freezer waiting to be baked. So now we have a bunch of sweets. If anybody who's local wants to come over and help us eat them, just let me know and you can stop by sometime. Seriously. Maybe I should just start posting on the blog anytime we have desserts to share. Except that I'm not sure if enough people will see it soon enough. Hopefully people do realize that they can subscribe via either RSS or email? (See the upper portion of the sidebar on the right.)

And on that note, I think I'm going to take a break and have some dessert and then post this.