Plant Biomechanics Conference and visit to France

This was the view from my hotel room in Clermont-Ferrand.  It is a relatively small town in the center of France.  

Compared to the US, everything is old.  The cathedral was built in the 1300s - 700 years this street has been pretty much the same.

The city has an electric monorail as well as buses for public transportation.  The funny thing about this tram is that it has bus tires as well as the track. Someone told me it was because they make Michelin tires here.

The even older Basilica had great stained glass windows and downspouts that looked like crying people.

The building across from the Basilica was built in the 1200s also and had the original fresco of an elephant still on the outside.  It is faded and the back half of the elephant appears to be missing, but for something 800 years old, on the outside of a building, amazing. 

I bought my breakfast here on the way to the conference.  This is exactly what Huxley needs for a shop - somewhere to get fresh produce, milk, cheese, bread, and a wide selection of French pastries.

Here are some of the people I met at the conference.  It was on plant biomechanics and had a diverse mix of engineers, physicists, and botanists.  I was the only plant breeder and Doug and I were the only ones working on corn - or even grasses.  There were a lot of tree biologists and some Arabidopsis folks looking at cell wall mechanics or specific mutants.  It was very international - French, German, Austrian, Russian, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Argentine, and American researchers.  One guy joked that at least his research wasn't funded by an evil corporation like Monsanto - on his first slide.  The guy on the right in this photo is Dmitri - a Russian scientist that kind of latched onto Doug and I.  I think we ate every meal together.  He was full of stories about the Russian and Belgian research organizations. Doug brought two potential post docs to the meeting and the French woman knew the town and took us to a tiny restaurant called "Le Petit Grille" that was probably the best food I ate in France.  

The last few days I rented a car and drove to Peyrehorade where there is a Monsanto breeding station.  It was a six hour drive through the mountains to get there and the rental place gave me a GPS that only worked in French.  It was an adventure, especially before I figured out the french words for right and left.  (A la gauche - to the left, A la doite - to the right).  I got very lost close to Peyrehorade because they were repairing the bridge and I had to ask at a farmhouse for directions.  I mimed where I wanted to go and she drew me a confusing map with lots of handwaving to explain where to go at each landmark.  But I got there. My colleagues were mostly on vacation, but Romain and Pierre came in from vacation to meet with me.  Both were Basque and were excited to show me the Basque country.  Romain took me to San Sebastian in Spain for tapas for dinner and drove me all over the French basque country.  

The world from Kate's perspective.

"See my tongue"

Kate has been particularly hilarious lately.  She has definitely grown up a lot in the last few weeks.  She even went down the slide by herself at the fair.  And she went up and down stairs - although she tumbled down our stairs.

The 4-H booth at the fair. 

Kate had our camera while we were at the fair.  She took tons of pictures of random people and things, but I thought it was a good view of how she sees the world.  She did put the camera down to get samples of cereal and chocolate from one of the 4H booths, luckily someone gave it back to us.

Apparently I don't have a head

There was another picture of Leila that I won't post, all belly, no head.

Kate begged me to take these pictures of her "Crazy Dance"

More Crazy Dance Goodness. 

Gotta love that Kate.

Once I read this book and I need your help to find it.

I have started this post a few times over the years.  Each time I get into it and then I drop it, not because it is overly personal or risky, but because it seems like such a long shot.  I am looking for a book, a specific book, but I can't remember what the title was, the author, or the character's names.  I can remember a lot of plot.  Or what I imagine to be the plot.

I thought of it again when I was listening to "This American Life".  For my birthday, the Cooks bought me wireless headphones and I have gotten into the habit of streaming NPR while I get ready into my headphones.

I went through a phase when I was about 15 where I read a lot of Piers Anthony myself.  I used to stop by the library or the comic book store and read a book before coming home some days.  I never bought any of his novels, because they usually had scantily clad heroines on the cover.  So, the comic book store owner must have hated me because I would come in, read a novel, a stack of comic books, and go home without spending a penny.

During this time, I remember one day that I missed my bus.  It was raining.  The next bus was an hour away and I didn't want to walk home in the rain so I stopped in the library.  I saw the book sitting on a shelf, I remember the dust jacket had a picture of a computer.  The title may have been "Press Enter. . .", but it isn't the Hugo award winning story with that name.  I read it in one sitting, which meant that I missed the next bus and was very late getting home.

The story begins with a deep space astronaut waking up.  He had been in suspended animation, alone, on a deep space mission that would take almost a hundred years.  He had a splitting headache, and a fading memory of bad dreams - voices in deep space calling to him.  The ship's computer beeped at him to pay attention to landing his spaceship.  To his utter surprise he isn't looking at an alien world, but Earth.  He tries to make radio contact, but the planet is silent.  The only radio signal is from a small town in California.


He lands just outside of town, and finds everything to be empty - no people anywhere.  There is a radio signal from the town center.  He finds the source to be a computer blinking, "Press Enter. . . " The computer then tells him the story of a Boy.  This is the book within the book.  The rest of the book alternated between the Astronaut's story and the computer's account of this Boy.

The Boy has bad dreams, remarkably like the Astronauts: voices among the stars.  There is one woman in particular that he talks with in his dreams.  She was a settler on a colony ship, but the ship she says hit a meteor and they spilled out, still in stasis, out of the belly of the ship into the cold vacuum.  As a boy he tells his mother, his teacher, his friends, everyone about his friend - the frozen woman in space.  He becomes obsessed with her.  His mother was worried about him and took him to a counselor. One day government men come and set up equipment in his room, tell him it will be OK, they would take the bad dreams away.

The Boy forgot about his dreams.  As a Teen, he is awkward, does not fit in.  He meets a man in the park that is growing vegetables in a large garden.  The man is a veteran of the last war, treated for PTSD with a new method to remove painful memories, but it leaves the veterans somewhat broken in new ways.  They find comfort in repetitive motion and struggle to fit into the modern society.  The city set aside a portion of the park where they farm.  The Boy joins them everyday, and feels at home with them, they have many of the same tics and needs.  One of them teaches him Tai Chi and as he matures he masters and adapts it.

Pretty soon he has a local following doing exercises and philosophy. This grows into a movement like Falun Gong.  As he matures, he meditates often, and begins to have dreams again about the woman in the dark out in the stars. She missed him.  Why did he stop talking to her, she asks him.  She is lonely. She worries the other settlers are dead. He weaves these dreams into his teaching and writing on the net and to his group.  As he does, he finds that the Government tries to shut him down.  He is imprisoned for a short time.

While on parole he decides to escape to Antarctica.  It had been settled by genetically engineered Chilean miners and had declared its independence along with a handful of US and Russian scientists.  It is the new frontier, and the only requirement for citizenship is painful genetic engineering for adaption to the cold.  He is introduced to an Antarctic contact that puts him in a shipping crate full of medical equipment.  As the door shuts, the contact tells him he must be very quiet, and he is sorry, because the trip would be very, very unpleasant.  It is a transformative experience.  Through the pain and itching he clings to his dream woman in the cold of space.

. . . .

This is getting very long for a blog post and I have been wordy enough lately.  If you have read this book, please let me know.  It is like an itch I can't reach.  I really would like to know what it is called or who wrote it.  I used to think about it when I was hoeing cotton fields in grad school, or once and a while when I am walking corn plots now.

No more chickens

I don't know what I will say to them.  The last few days when I am alone with my thoughts - usually early in the morning when the sun is up, but I know I don't have to be, I imagine what our next conversation will be like.  Sometimes I pretend that Dick and Helen, our neighbors, are apologetic and bring us kringla cookies because they feel bad about making us get rid of our chickens.  Then I am grand and forgiving.  Sometimes I am rude and angry and I swear at them and tell them about my crying children.  Sometimes, in the twilight between awake and asleep, between dream and imagining, we pass in the street and we say nothing to each other and that breaks my heart too.

Tuesday the Huxley City Council asked us to come to their meeting to discuss renewal of our license to have chickens in the city limits.  Two years ago we went to the city and got a special dispensation to have chickens in the city limits on the conditions that all of our neighbors agreed and that we kept the chickens contained.  I went, dreading the meeting.  I knew that our neighbors across the fence were not happy about it because we had let the chickens roam and they went in their yard.  They are our friends, really, and we had talked about it before.  We were third or fourth on the agenda.  The meeting wasn't going well - Mr Quick was angry about the development the city wasted millions of our tax dollars on.  That is another story.  Dick and Helen were both there when I sat down.  I jokingly asked them if they were there to testify against me. They said they weren't there to testify against anyone, but I knew that wasn't true.

When it was our turn, one of the council members asked why this was on the agenda.  The city clerk said that they had received a letter from Dick and Helen complaining about the chickens and that our yearly permission was up.  Most of the council members were skeptical about us getting chickens the first two times I had been there, but we had covered most of their concerns by having a letter signed by all the neighbors agreeing to have chickens, plans for a fancy coop, and a limit on the number of chickens.  I knew how it was going to end once Helen and Dick started talking.  In their defense, they did say they didn't want to be there, but the clerk had asked them to come.  But, they said they didn't think we should have chickens.  The chickens had got out and come in their yard.  Dick and slipped on the crap.  Helen had expensive hostas.  They chickens have digging feet of hosta death.

I tried to defend the chickens.  I admitted that we had let them out in the evenings, which two city council members were visibly upset about.  We had not said earlier that the chickens would roam free.  Sometimes they went along the fence and five months ago, when I was out of town, they had wandered a number of times into the neighbors yard.

Helen called Leila furious and vowed to call the cops.  Leila called me upset and when I got back I went to talk to Helen.  I told Helen then, if she would apologize that I would kill the chickens.  Helen doesn't believe in apologizing.  No, really.  She doesn't. Leila said she was sorry, but Helen told me, that if she, or anyone, is really sorry, then they wouldn't have done it.  If she was sorry, she wouldn't let the chickens out any more.  We had been irresponsible and she wasn't going to stand for it.  I told Helen that it had really upset Leila, not that the chickens had got out, but how Helen had spoke to her, and that I hoped that she would because they had been our friends.  Helen never apologized.  I didn't kill the chickens, and was careful that the chickens never went in their yard.  That was five months ago.

We discussed it for a half hour.  The same council had spent 5 minutes discussing paying an outside firm for a commercial development plan for 20,000 dollars that we didn't have.  It passed. Don't get me started.  A number of compromises were proposed - building a fence for example.  I said I was happy to build a fence.  Again they were skeptical about why would even want to have chickens.  Again I explained that I liked having them for my kids to have chores to do that were real and that I liked the eggs.  They aren't dogs or cats that love you.  But we were still attached to them.  Finally they voted.  It was unanimous against allowing chickens.

So, we could either ignore the rules, which I think are stupid, or we could abide by them.  I mean, what could the council have done if we had ignored them?  Called us in for another meeting?  A fine?  Have the cops come and take our chickens by force? I didn't want to kill the chickens.  I usually am the chicken butcherer.  I am pretty good at stripping the feathers, gutting and cleaning chicken.  I don't like plucking, so I usually skin the chicken and cut off the wingtips that have those little pin feathers.  But, somehow it is different when I want to kill them.  Leila put an add on Craigslist and 20 people called before lunch.  By four they were out on someone's farm.  I guess that means we would abide by the law/rule.  I don't know if that is the honorable thing to do.  When I comforted my crying daughters it felt weak, like I had backed down to a bully.

I still don't know what I will say to my neighbors.  For now, we haven't talked about it.  Maybe we never will.  I don't think I have forgiven them or the council members, but I am not sure what the right thing to do is.  So instead, I lie awake running scenarios in my head, pretending I know what to say and do to make it right and be the person I imagine myself to be.  

Fourth of July

Barbecuing on the porch fire pit.  Our cow this year was a fatty one, but had some great steaks. Leila caught me testing which steaks were juiciest.   

It was great having a day off of pollinating in the nursery this week for the fourth.  It has been dry here and I was worried about losing the nursery.  Corn does not like to be thirsty while it is pollinating and will abort kernels if it is too dry.  Luckily we got rain Thursday morning and probably saved all of our hard work.  Iowa is not set up for irrigation, 99% of the time the rains come every week or so.  This year has been hot and dry with unusual weather patterns from the northwest instead of pulling Gulf moisture north until it runs into the Jetstream, releasing the rain.

We had a great meal of barbecue, new potatoes, and roasted cherry tomatoes.

I have spent a lot of time pollinating this year.  In the last few years I have spent more time taking notes and in meetings than in the field, but we are short handed and I have a number of special projects that needed some extra attention and so I cancelled my meetings and strapped on my pollinating apron.  I was a little bitter the first week, but it has been really good.  I forgot how much I liked pollinating.  It makes me tired though and quite a few days I have fallen asleep reading stories to the girls.  Early mornings and working outside all day make me very tired.  That and 100 degree days made me want a haircut and a shave.

I did finally "finish" Kate's birthday present - a play refrigerator to go with the play stove.  I still need to paint them.  I am thinking red and white.

Kate is growing quickly, but still is not potty trained.  As you can see she still wears two diapers. 

Colleen looks skeptical, but ate thirds of the roasted tomatoes.  She is my best tomato eater. 

Aleah still beams at everyone and is still losing teeth. She wishes that Emily's friends wanted to play with her more often.

Emily is bored, but has lots of friends that always want her to come play with them.  But she says she is awesome.  She is turning twelve tomorrow!  I think that means she can do more chores since she is so grown up. (She is reading over my shoulder.) 

We have had continual raccoon visits these last few weeks.  There is a mother and four teenage raccoons living near us .  This one is under our porch, but I have seen them under the street in the storm drain more often.  This one I think had rabies.  The neighbor called the cops after it wouldn't get away from his garage in the middle of the day.  The teenager ones have been on the back porch a number of times and I have chased them away with a hoe.  I hit a couple square, but didn't kill them.  Next time. . . 

Gluten-free for now

A few months back, I decided that I would try a gluten-free diet to see if it would lower my liver enzyme levels and inflammation.  This is a bit of a gamble since my blood tests were negative for antibodies associated with celiac disease. It has been a relatively easy, except when I have been travelling or eating at catered work events.  A couple of times I ate my sandwich and guiltily loved every bite of bread.

There are a lot of gluten free products on the market, and most of them I have avoided.  Not because I am against them, but because the pre-prepared stuff is expensive and since we make most things from scratch at home it wasn't necessary. We have a wheat grinder that I appropriated to make rice flour and corn flour.  I tried to grind rolled oats in it, but they gummed up the works, but Leila ground them in the blender fine enough to use.  Most gluten-free dessert recipes rely on guar gum, tapioca flour, or more exotic chemistry to hold the flours together.  I haven't used them, but have relied on extra egg and a mix of different flours to do the trick.


Most days, before I decided to experiment with my diet, I ate sandwiches for lunch.  I would pile as much lettuce, swiss or farm cheese, meat - if available, or egg, and mustard and mayo that I could squeeze between two peices of bread.  Colleen called them my Shaggy and Scooby sandwiches.  I needed to replace them with something that was quick to prepare that I could eat for lunch, but was filling.  I tried a number of things, but the fastest and best replacement for a sandwich is this salad:

I will try and load a picture, but it isn't really a beautiful meal, and varies with what is available in the garden and what I have on hand.

Poached egg and rice vinegar salad
1-2 poached eggs
Bowl of salad greens - lettuce, beet greens, cabbage leaves, etc.
Splash of Rice Vinegar
Pinch Salt
Dash of Pepper

Optional ingredients:
Veg:
Carrots
Peas
Onions
Beet greens

Fruit:
Banana slices
Apple slices

Cheese:
Preferably farm cheese or Havarti

The way I learned to poach an egg, is not technically poaching.  It is a mix between sunny side up and steamed eggs.  I put a bit of oil or butter on the pan and crack 1-2 eggs.  Add a pinch of salt and a dash of pepper.  Once the edges start to turn white and the pan is really hot, pour 1/2-3/4 c. of water around the egg and cover with a tight lid.  Then steam until the water evaporates off.  I like the yolk still runny in the middle.

While that is cooking, I wash my lettuce and greens.  Depending how much dirt is on them from the garden, this can be fast or slow.  We are starting to get cabbage loopers on our lettuce so I try to pick through and find them before I stick in my fork.  The salad spinner is great, but won't get the bugs out.  Today I found two.  One in my bowl at the table.  Uggh.

I like the mix of vinegar, egg yolk, and greens.  The greens wilt a little with the hot egg, but somehow that improves it to me.  Especially if the greens are a little bitter.  The banana slices are actually quite good with the mix, even if it sounds strange.  I had it in a salad at a conference in Indianapolis at a very swank restaurant.  The waiter swore to me that the best thing on the menu was a salad with blackened tuna and bananas. I was very skeptical, but he was right.  Amazingly good combination.

One day I was desperate for some whole grains and started trying to make different pancakes.  The recipe I settled on is roughly this:

Corn, rice, and bean flour pancakes
1-2 egg
1 c. sticky rice flour
1/2 c. corn flour
1/4 c. white bean flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Dash of salt
Milk

 I don't measure my ingredients well.  Mostly a dash of this and that, but the ratios are pretty close.  I tried single flour versions, but the rice one was kinda gummy and the corn one needed more egg.  I didn't try an all bean flour version, but my theory is that it is high protein enough to hold it together.  This makes as good of a pancake as I have had.  It can be a bit dense, and adding some oil to the batter helps.  I sometimes have added savory spices - onions, garlic, or salt and pepper.  I have used that instead of a hot dog bun or as a side with my dinner, especially if they are a bit thin they are great.

Leila tried modifying this to make biscuits, but they were grainy.  I think they needed less corn meal and more bean flour.  I will work on it.  Overall, it is a doable.  Our attempts at desserts have been mostly successful.  Leila made a good oatmeal raisin cookie recipe that doesn't use any wheat flour and I keep some in the freezer for when I get snacky after the kids are in bed.  Leila made a great flourless chocolate cake for Kate's Birthday - she is three.  Crazy.  Emily makes a custardy rice pudding with sticky rice that I really like. I think I will stick with it for another month until I am due for another blood test.  If my liver enzyme levels are down, I will probably stay on it, if not I will bake all day long.

Museum Hopping in D.C.

I tried to find as many boat pictures as I could in the art museum

While we were in D.C. we visited some of the Smithsonian museums.  When I was younger I thought there was a single museum and I imagined it had the warehouse from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  I have been to D.C. three times and spent days each trip in different museums, but I have not even come close to seeing all of them.  There were thousands of school kids swarming over the Air and Space Museum and the Natural History Museum so we spent more time in the art museums than Emily and Aleah would have liked.  

They had a sketchbook from Paul Guaguin that I thought was really interesting.  Emily and I each sat down and tried to draw some of the scenes.  

At the Air and Space Museum, Aleah discovered that she looks a lot like Amelia Earhart as a young girl.  Emily dressed as Amelia Earhart for a school project one year and they both look like her.  She is an inspiring woman.

The national mall is full of people always, and the grass is very sad.  The dirt it sits on is highly compacted from tourists and locals, from protests, and celebrations.  The probably need to deep rip it every 3 years and start over.

We spent almost a full day in the Natural History Museum.  From the biology to geology displays we could have spent another day.  I just love this stuff.

Aleah was obsessed with the short films about evolution.  She was really interested in all of the human ancestor species.  They have a display that shows reconstructions of each branch that makes it easier to imagine.  Neanderthals really would not have looked very different from other people I realized.  The Homo floriensis exhibits were really cool (Emily is reading over my shoulder and is reading this in her best British pompous accent so I will try to not be so erudite. Look that one up, Emily).

We had a great time canoeing with my Mom and it was a great visit.  I just wish we could hang out more often.  She wrote about it on her blog too.

Emily's Vacation Reading Reviews

Post by Emily:

 

 Tomod:a templers apprentice- Tormod Macleod,  a boy cursed with the Vision, delivers a secret message to the Pope and gets sucked into an epic adventure as Templer Alexander's apprentice. He will face dangers because they are hunting him. Tormod has seen what will happen,but could he change it?

                                                                           4 stars

Tormod: a templers gifts- Tormod has returned home to his many younger siblings, older brother, mom and very angry dad. The Power he developed while with the templer stands out and he leaves. Tormod's power is going out of control until he meets a girl called Aine also with the Vision and the Power. Only she can mend him.  They are still being hunted.  They must find Bertand, he will help them.

                                                                         4.5 stars 

The true meaning of Smekday: A group of aliens called the Boov have invaded Earth and Gratuity's mom has been abducted (by the aliens).  The boov want all the humans to relocate to Florida but Gratuity is set on not going. With her cat Pig and a criminal Boov called J.Lo she embarks on a hilarious journey. But that's not all, they're faced with more problems, such as the undefeated Takers, or Nimrogs or Gorg. Whatever.

                                                                  Infinity stars

                                                                   

  

Sleeping on the train

I should have taken more pictures.  Here are my sketches of the girls resting on the train.

Kate's drawing of our family.  I am the hairy one in the middle. 

Emily's description of her conversation with Kate.

Today while Emily's German-pancakes were cooking Kate walked up to her and said:

Kate: When a pancakes be done?
Emily: Five minutes?
Kate: No.
Emily: Maybe ten minutes?
Kate: No.
Emily: No minutes??
Kate: Yes!

Taking the train to D.C.

 I told Leila that I wanted to take the train because it was cheaper than flying.  This is true, but not all true.  The real truth is that I wanted to take a train trip.  It seemed so cool, like a hipster way of travelling better than the frantic queues of frustrated fliers waiting to get through inane security.  (Does anyone really think taking off our shoes keeps us safer? Don't get me started.) I hate driving long distances and the train stops one hour from Huxley.  And somehow a train trip is an adventure, with the potential for good and for bad times.  When I told Leila about the cost that was just an excuse.  I wanted to do something exciting.  


It takes ~ 28 hours to go from Osceola, IA to Washington D.C. Union Station on the train, including the 5 hours downtime in Chicago between trains.  Leila saw through my arguments completely and decided that this adventure was one she could sit out.  Sleeping on the train, in our seats, potentially bad food, truly strange strangers, and the very real possibility of train delays were actualities brighter than any romantic notions of train travel.  Aleah and Emily I volunteered.  I told them it would be awesome.  


We were supposed to catch the train in Osceola, IA at 7:30 AM.  I got the girls up at 5:00 AM to get there in time to get a parking spot and to be on time for the train.  We didn't need to hurry.  The tiny station was close to empty, and the train didn't get there until almost 9 AM.  When the train pulled up, it was still exciting though.  He tooted his horn and we climbed aboard.  The seats were larger than plane seats with room enough that I couldn't reach my foot to the seat in front of me, only to the footrest.  

Aleah in the Lounge Car.  She just beamed at everyone.  

It took about 6 hours to get to Chicago, and then we had a long wait until our next train.  We wandered around the city and Aleah quickly tired of walking with her stuff.  We decided to get a locker, but then discovered that when we squeezed our bags in it broke the kindle screen.  That was one expensive locker.

On the way back we had the same long wait in Chicago, but ditched our stuff sooner and made it to Millenium Park to see the sculptures and the play in the fountain. Chicago's Union Station is probably the worst designed building I have ever seen.  This beautiful waiting area is mostly empty, because to get on your train you have to go down a level and cram into a small, poorly lit, waiting area with threadbear dirty carpet.  Someone really should have planned that better.

We worried about sleeping on the train.  The seats were large and leaned back quite far, but it still is tough sleeping sitting up.  Leila packed us a whole bag of food and another suitcase with three pillows and three large blankets so we were set. Aleah schmooshed herself against me and quickly fell asleep( or asphyxiated  - she was pressed so tightly against me).  The man sitting next to Emily felt uncomfortable with her leaning against him and asked me if I would switch with her.  I put her next to Aleah, but she didn't want Aleah to touch her.  That didn't work.  Aleah and I went to the lounge car and slept there.  The conductor woke us up a couple of times, but didn't make us go back to our seats till morning and we all were able to lay down and sleep.

The best part of the trip was the diversity of passengers: Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, Hipsters, Hispanics, Black, White, Indian, and Muslim. I had a couple of long discussions with the Amish families travelling.  There was a little Amish girl that was Aleah's age and they played together some, but she mostly spoke Dutch and little English.  It was a hoot to hear from two brothers' plans to increase production of furniture and hopes to be able to sell their chairs in China.  We discussed corn prices and my job and the difficulties of raising kids in the world, but not of the world.  I am fascinated with the balance of modern and traditional lifestyle from the different Amish and Mennonite groups.  I feel like I have to make some of those same tradeoffs now, even though I have most of the modern conveniences.

I will put some more pictures up of the rest our trip later.  It is getting late and I have to go to work tomorrow.  Too bad I can't have a vacation from my vacation before going back to the everyday troubles.

Mystery of the Unbroken Egg

We have a mystery at our house.  On Wednesday morning, I woke up Aleah to go to school.  When she rolled over, I saw an egg in her bed.  There was a brown, raw egg sitting unbroken next to her in bed. This sounds like a crime for Encyclopedia Brown!

How did an egg get in her bed?  We discussed the possibilities at breakfast:

1. Aleah slept-walk down stairs, picked up an egg from the counter or fridge and brought it back to bed with her.  Then she rolled over and didn't smash it.
2. Emily suggests that I had an egg in my pocket and it fell out when I read stories.  This is possible, since sometimes when I get the eggs I put them in my pockets, but I did not get eggs that day.  So I would have had to have had the egg in my pocket for two or three days and then deposited it in her bed.  Or the egg would have been in her bed for two or three days.  We read stories every night sitting on Aleah's bed and I can't see how a raw egg could be unbroken with three children and I sitting on the bed.  Especially because Kate and Colleen are wiggly worms.  
3. Another member of our family, in their sleep, got an egg and put it in her bed. This rules out Kate since she still can't get out of her crib without help.  Emily says she can, but I have not seen it ever.  
4. Someone did it on purpose, as a joke. No one fessed up to this, and we aren't very funny.
5. A chicken came in the house through an open door, went upstairs, climbed in bed with Aleah, under the covers, and laid an egg.  At night. Then went outside again before anyone saw it.  The one piece of evidence that supports this convoluted theory is that Kate left the chicken coop hatch open and two chickens were wandering the yard the next day, and there were chicken footprints on the steps.  The cat can push the door open, security at our house is a little lax, and that night I did wake up around 11 and push the door closed.  But that means that sometime between 10:30 and 11:00, a chicken came into the house, went upstairs, did the deed, and then departed.  Chickens lay eggs during the day usually too.  
6. Someone else came in our house and put an egg in her bed - creepy.  

Who can solve the mystery of the egg in Aleah's bed?  Duh Dah Nah!!

Kansas City Temple Open House and Update

Thanks for all of the responses to my last post.  There aren't a lot of comments there, but a lot of people have asked me about it.  I have decided that I will give gluten-free a try, but I am easing my way into it. I am a little reluctant because it would require changing how we all eat, or separate meals for me.  That and gluten-free diets seem like such a fad, with some fanatical followers.

This is just a part of our food storage: a lot of wheat, noodles, and non-gluten free food. 

Two weeks ago, we went to Kansas City to visit the new LDS temple.  Before LDS temples are dedicated, they are open for tours to the public.  My children had been to the temple with us but, always had to wait outside, because they are not old enough to enter the temple.  This was a good chance for them to see what it was like and for us to get away from Huxley.  

 We decided we would drive down the day before, eat at a restaurant on the way, and stay at a hotel.  We ate at a local greasy spoon in Lamoni, IA (I am betting that Mormon's settled there at one time - I checked, it is one of the headquarters for the Community of Christ - Mormon offshoot religion).  Slow service, but good food. They had Amish crafts for sale around the restaurant and there were buggies driving on the highway outside.

 We found a great hotel that had a mini-waterpark inside.  It was an ideal place to stay, just one exit from Liberty, Missouri.  We all had a great time going down the slide, which was wicked fast if you arched your back and rode on the balls of your feet.  Emily swears I almost shot over the edge.  It was that fast.

 After 2 hours of playing in the water, we went to Liberty Jail (Too dark and scary for Kate) and found a barbecue for lunch.  Kansas City is famous for its "burnt ends", but this place had amazing burgers.

 It was very windy, a huge storm system was building.  The temple was packed.  Lots of good questions from the people in our tour group.

On our way home there was so much wind and rain we could hardly see to drive.  Leila pulled off the freeway and we hung out at JoAnns until it eased up.  There were multiple tornados in the storm, just off the freeway we learned later, but we didn't see any of them.  It was hard enough to see the semi truck in front of us.

Back home, the storm blew down the bird's nest by the front door and broke all the eggs.  It was too bad, because the house finch had laid 4 more blue eggs and I suspect that the two mottled eggs were really from a cowbird.  It would have been really interesting to see brood parasitism up close.

A Sample Size of One

We had pie for breakfast today, for the second day in a row.  Leila made pie to go along with Easter, and in one of the glorious Gardunia traditions - leftover pie for breakfast. As I ate my second piece of pumpkin pie, I seriously considered that this could be my last pie.  This last week I had another round of blood tests to monitor my liver enzymes.  Wait, let me back up, there is more to this story that I have not told.

Almost two years ago now, I thought I would go for a physical.  I hadn't had one since I was in high school and it mostly consisted of turning my head, coughing, and trying to get out of the office as fast as possible with a signature so I could run cross country.  Pretty routine.  My weight was good, a little higher than I had been before, but still on the thin side of normal.  My blood pressure was good.  Then my blood work came back.  Cholesterol - normal.  Blood sugar - Normal.  Liver enzymes - Four times above normal.  Dangerously high.  My doctor was concerned that I might have hepatitis, reasonable since I had been exposed repeatedly on my mission in the Leon University Hospital.  I worked in the emergency room for service and helped with two patients that essentially died of liver failure along with some severe infections and broken bones.  

My local doc referred me to a specialist - Dr. Semon.  He came into the examining room with an IV bag pumping chemotherapy into his spleen.  He had stage four cancer, and no patience for the apparently healthy guy with abnormal liver enzymes.  He felt around and told me it could be inflamed, but was most likely a fluke.  A false positive. "Get tested again." he said.  A few days later he called.  "Get tested again.  Still probably a lab error."  

After a few rounds of blood work he was convinced that there might be something legitimately wrong with my liver and ordered an ultra sound.  When I could get in for that, the tech laughed when he chatted with me about looking for a fatty and inflamed liver.  "Not likely," he said.  "You don't fit the profile - obese, diabetic."  I am very ticklish and it was an ordeal for both of us.  But he didn't laugh.  He was concerned.  He said, "You have a 50-year-old alcoholic's liver."  

Dr. Semon, told me that if I could lose 10 pounds, exercise, this would probably go away on its own, but if it didn't I would need to get a biopsy.  I had six months.  So I started running again.  I was careful about what I ate, I lost 10 lb,  I ran a half marathon.  My liver enzymes were still 3 x above normal, so he booked me for a biopsy.  "The biopsy," he said, "would hurt a lot, they push a big needle between your ribs and pull out a sliver of the inside of the liver. If you move wrong, they can puncture your lung. So hold still when they tell you."  The drugs knocked me out and I don't hardly remember it, that was a relief. But, the pathologist's report said that 80% of my liver cells were full of fat, but no visible scar tissue.  I was officially diagnosed with Non-Alcoholic Steato-Hepatitis (NASH).  

All of this took about 18 months, and Dr. Semon passed away.  My new doctor assured me that my levels are still dropping (a little less than 3x higher than normal) and that I could probably maintain at this level for "a long time." I still have regular blood tests for liver enzymes.  

Back to the pie: This last week I went in to give my sample, and I noticed that she had requested a Celiac panel as well.  Celiac disease is an immune response to gluten - a key protein in wheat and other cereals, that cascades into a syndrome of inflammation that affects almost the whole body, but especially the digestive system, including the liver.  I went online and started reading about Celiac symptoms and pathology, about gluten free diets.  I was actually excited that this could be the answer.  Many of the worst symptoms I do not have.  My digestion is fast, but not painful, or abnormal.  However, all that I read conceded that the symptoms were variable across many people and some do not show any symptoms other than increased liver enzyme levels - That is me I thought.  I read some very encouraging research studies where people with my liver symptoms within a year of gluten-free diets returned to normal.  Aha, I thought, finally something I could do to take control of this.  I could cut out wheat if it meant that I didn't have to worry about this nagging health issue.  

My test results came back on Monday.  I am probably not a celiac. But, I wish I was, because then I could do something about this. Reading articles about liver disease, there is a probability that changing my diet will affect my liver enzymes, but it isn't a high probability, unless I am a celiac and reacting to gluten.  I realized though that the probabilities mean less when I am the patient, because I am a sample size of one.  There is a probability that the blood tests were wrong, 20% false negative rate for IgA, 5% for the multiple tests.  5 out of a hundred people.  But am I the minority or the majority?

I never understood this about people before now.  My mission president once told me the wonders of bee pollen and colloidal silver for improving his health.  I looked up the papers about both, neither had any significant health benefits in clinical trials.  Why would he take this I thought, it has no evidence to support it.  But, it seemed to work for him.

The only way to test with a sample size of one is to introduce a treatment and measure the response later in time, but that response is confounded by all of the other elements of the changes I have made to my life.  For example,  if I take Vitamin E, while simultaneously exercising, or eating better, and there is an effect.  Which really was the cause?  If I do nothing, and my stress level reduces, that could have an effect also. If I cut out gluten and the levels drop, is it do to decreased gluten or the cascading other changes to what I eat? And there is no control population.  What works for me may be ineffective for 95% of people, but if it works, it works.   So I am left with a dilemna.  One way or another, I am experimenting on myself.  Looking for changes that may be out of my control.  

What to say. . .

After Aleah's video I am a little tongue tied.  I just can't top that.  It was one of the best examples of her personality and spring.  I have decided that spring is definitely my favorite time of year in Iowa. Iowa is at its best.  I love seeing the calves in the pastures and the spring flowers, before the summer weeds make me hate my flowerbeds.

I have been reading a book my coworker gave me about hiking in Iowa.  Iowa is not the same as Idaho.  It is a little depressing to read about the tiny pieces of Iowa wilderness that are left.  Idaho has thousands of acres of wilderness, state and federal lands, mostly protected, and mostly open for hiking and camping.  Some people argue that these lands should be sold to the highest bidder, but after living in the Midwest and Texas for a decade, I am convinced that this would be a grave error.  Imagine Iowa if the federal and state government in the early days of settlement had decided to preserve large tracts of prairie.  It is harder to preserve farm ground than hard to reach mountain valleys, but I guarantee that if Idaho had been parcelled into private farms and ranches throughout the wilderness someone would have wanted it, logged it, built on it, fenced it, and much would be lost.

I hope to devote some time this summer seeking out some of the wildish (Mostly restored) bits of prairie and wilderness left in Iowa.  We will see how far that desire goes once the craziness of summer selection sets in.