Kids are funny

I do kind of wish I lived closer to my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. They keep me updated with e-mails and photos and video, but it's not the same.

My brother told me something funny/cute that happened recently: he found an old "sticky slug" toy I had got him years back. This is one of those things - like Willie the Wall-Walking Octopus - that is made of a tacky plastic that will stick to a wall and then gradually peel off and fall, if you throw it at the wall.

Well, he showed it to my niece. At first she was a little afraid of it, how it would fall down suddenly, but then she decided she really liked it. And now it's one of her toys.

Well, my brother found smaller versions of the slug on sale so he bought her a package of them.

She now says she has a mama slug and baby slugs. My brother sent me a picture of her looking up at all of them stuck to the ceiling.

She also has reached the stage where she "feeds" pretend food (she has those wooden fruits and vegetables that you can "slice" with a toy knife, they come apart with Velcro) to her stuffed animals.

I just barely remember stuff like that from my childhood. (Sometimes I wish I could go back.)

***

In other news, I'm guardedly optimistic about the vitamin D3. Almost no hives this week, and that was even with going out into the field one afternoon when the pollen was very high. I know they say it can take months for the detectable levels in the blood to change, but maybe, just maybe, it's helping.

And I haven't noticed any (noticeable) side effect. I mean, it could still be eating my liver or something but I haven't noticed any problems.

One of the other things upping D3 intake should do is help keep my bones strong; I have a pretty strong family history of osteoporosis, so that's something I am concerned about. I do other things (like weight bearing exercise) to try to help prevent it, but hopefully the D3 will help too.

Also these past couple days my mood has been better. But it's hard to say on that; my moods are so influenced by what's going on in my life that I can't tell for sure if this is a blip or a long-term improvement. I know I was in a really awful mood Monday/Tuesday because of events involving one class. (If I could just learn to be less reactive. And if I could REALLY learn "not my circus, not my monkeys." Someone on ITFF commented, apostrophizing to her students, "Get your act together, or you will be sad pandas." and I was thinking about how in my world, I find myself more commonly thinking, "I am a sad panda because my students don't seem to have their act together." I need to learn not to care more about their education than they do. But I do. And that's why it sometimes stinks to be me.