So, as any long-term readers know, we live in an apartment. We don’t live on the ground floor, and our building’s courtyard, while spacious, is not fenced in and we don’t have a pool for the building either. All of our close friends live in houses and they all have pools in various sizes for the kids. What’s nice is that we do get routinely invited over to swim – Hayley went to her friend’s house today and swam this afternoon in between storms.

However, there are times when it’s hot and sunny and we want to splash around but no one is home. And we wondered why we kept feeling like we couldn’t have a pool too, just because of an apartment lifestyle.

So we got one. Granted, we’ll never be able to have a huge pool to actually swim in, and it’s not like we could set up a water slide or diving board unless we were willing to take our lives in our hands, but a little pool? Why not?

And in the end, the “little” pool wasn’t that little anyway. It’s wide enough for both kids, easily, and they can enjoy themselves. I can stick my feet in too, while I read out at the table beside them.

It’s quite nice, actually. George filled it up with a lot of stock pots of water, and once it was halfway it was enough for them to get in, while still leaving a high enough wall that water wasn’t constantly sloshing out to annoy the neighbors downstairs. I have to frequently remind them not to purposely splash or throw the water out of the pool but so far it’s working out well. They get to have fun, cool off, I get to read, and surprisingly it tires them out enough to get them to sleep relatively easy at night.

We may not have a yard, but dammit, we have a pool and it’s working for us!

Speaking of pools, we went to the public pool for the first time on Friday. It was a lot of fun. I wasn’t sure what to expect with two young kids and a crowd of people in a huge pool, but they have free life jackets and it wasn’t as packed as I had anticipated, despite the warm, sunny day. Hayley finally got brave enough to lift her feet up (we convinced her the life jacket will not let her sink under, even if she wanted to) and she did a dog paddle all over the pool, even going out to areas where she could no longer touch the ground.

Breanna still wanted to be held unless she was on the steps, but she did jump in once. She also fell in. I had gone in to the washroom so George was sitting on the side while Hayley paddled around. Breanna leaned over to see the water and being top heavy with the life jacket, she just lost her balance and went in, her face hitting the water and everything. She didn’t cry – I think she was too shocked to be able to. She has talked about it ever since though. “I fall in the pool!”

It was unfortunate that we needed to eat supper, because it was very nice to just swim around, but alas we had to leave to get groceries and come home to cook something. We’re hoping to go back tomorrow if it’s nice enough. The forecast is calling for “periods of rain” so we’ll have to see.

And if not, at least we have our private pool on the balcony!

I don’t know why I don’t get my hair cut more often, because frankly I almost always feel better afterwards (except for the odd, rare time that the person cutting it butchers my hair). Then again, in some ways it’s fun to go a long time in between because then it’s more of a drastic change.

Of course, going a year and a half without a hair cut may be a bit too long.

Anyway, there’s a great little hair school that charges ridiculously low prices for cuts. I went for the first time several years ago and the student was so new that the teacher ended up cutting the vast majority of my hair. I loved him immediately and loved my hair when he was done. The second time I went, he wasn’t there and I ended up with a student who gave me a relatively decent cut, but not really what I wanted and I didn’t like it for about two months.

I’ve been wanting a cut for months now, and so has Hayley. Last night I was drying her hair after her bath and combing out the numerous knots, and she was unhappy. She said she really wanted a hair cut. I spontaneously said, “You know what? Let’s both go tomorrow since the weather isn’t supposed to be that great anyway!” She thought it was a great idea.

Today, I called and found out my original teacher was working and could do my hair so I made an appointment immediately, giddy that he’d be cutting my hair again. Sometimes I’m nervous before a cut, but not this time.

We both ended up getting our hair done by him since we were there during the in-between time when there are few appointments and no students to supervise. Hayley was excellent, sitting quietly in the chair beside me, waiting for her turn, and just watching everything, even though it took about 40 minutes to finish my hair.

Then he did her hair and she was just as good, sitting very still and straight, and giggling happily every time she saw herself in the mirror.

Hayley went in with the determination that she wanted a cut “with no bangs and an inch below my ears” while I showed up with three pictures showing the front, side, and back of the Katie Holmes angled bob. After a little over an hour together, we left, both of us completely happy and several pounds lighter in the head.

Before:

After? Keep going…

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While spontaneity is a fun and wonderful thing from time to time, it’s also good to have nice, solid plans. Which is why I already know what I’m doing November 21st, 2008, come hell or high water.

Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes.

I can’t tell you how much I loved Cake Wrecks, a blog dedicated to royally screwed up, ugly, misshapen, or all of the above cakes made by so-called professional bakeries. I think the one that made me laugh the most was this attempted copycat cake. Hilarious!

I am shocked because I just looked at my calendar to date something and realized it’s July 28th already. It’s August on Friday. Where did this entire month go?! It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating my birthday and now one entire month of summer is just about done. Sheesh. This is what happens when you get older, right? Time starts speeding up. Meanwhile, Hayley will tell you that the summer has been really long already – not long in a bad or boring way, but long. I remember when summer seemed like it went on forever too. I miss that.

Last night I finished up my work really quickly because I had other plans for the evening. I curled up on the couch and finished the last 100 pages of the book I had been reading, Three Cups of Tea – One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time. I should have finished it ages ago but I just hadn’t made enough time to sit and read it for long periods of time, but it wasn’t because the book was dull – it was excellent. It’s the best non-fiction book I have ever read.

The basic story is about a mountain climber, Greg Mortenson. He goes to Pakistan and he wants to reach the summit of K2. He “fails” in his attempt, but really it’s hard to call it a failure since the only reason he turned around was because someone else in his party got pulmonary edema and Greg helped carry him back down to base camp. When he gets him down there, his body was too exhausted to even think of turning back around to try again.

Disappointed and mildly delirious with exhaustion, he got lost coming down off the glacier at the base of K2 and wandered into the wrong village, a little tiny village in Northern Pakistan that wasn’t even on the maps at that time, called Korphe. The village elder kept him there to let him recuperate and get his strength back. Greg was a nurse so he helped some of the locals who were sick and he toured the village. On one of his last days there, he asked to see the school and the elder was angry because the Pakistani government had never given them the money they needed. They had no actual school and they shared a teacher with another village nearby, so the kids only had a teacher two or three days a week. He took Greg up to a plateau on a hilltop and he found a circle of kids, all alone, looking at a book of math problems. They had no books so they were copying the work by scratching the equations into the dirt with sticks.

Greg was so upset by the fact that there were kids who were so determined to learn that they would sit completely unsupervised and do their work on the ground instead of playing (while kids back home complained about school), that he promised the elder that he would come back and build a school for them.

The book follows the huge effort it takes for Greg to get back and build the first school and how it ends up that he’s able to build fifty schools by the end of the book, in ten years. I don’t know how many he’s built since then, the book ends in 2003, but I’m going to research tonight after I’m done working to find out what they’ve been doing since then.

It’s a fantastic book, because it really answers that question of “well what can just one person do?” One person launched this whole thing and is now helping 10-15,000 Pakistani kids in impoverished rural areas (not to mention a lot of Afghan refugees as well who crossed over during the uprising of the Taliban) get an education, including girls who were not normally able to go to school at all. And he counters all the war talk by saying that education is actually the best weapon against terrorism because most of the terrorists come from madrassas (extremist schools that teach nothing but a warped version of the Koran) that get their students from places where they have no other options, so they end up being “educated” in extremism and end up completely brainwashed.

If you’re looking fro something good to read, I highly recommend it. It’s an excellent and very inspirational book.

I love this collection of photos of people cooling off in the hot summer all around the world.

You know what bugs me? Paypal is used in so many places but there are two places I can’t shop because they only accept credit cards. I have some gift certificates at Amazon.com and three books in my shopping cart. I can’t buy them yet because I’m about ten bucks short for the shipping costs, but I can’t pay the difference with my Paypal account even though I have the ten bucks to cover it. I don’t have a credit card so I have to wait until I get another gift certificate.

And last week I watched and LOVED Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible which was only online for a limited time. I would very much like to buy the three episodes off of iTunes, especially since it’s six bucks total, but again? No Paypal, only credit cards. It’s especially unfortunate because I can only find At II and III on YouTube but not Act I.

Oh well, at least I can still watch my favorite song from Act II:

Did anyone else watch Dr. Horrible? I had no idea that Neil Patrick Harris could sing or that he had done Broadway so I was really surprised. I love everything about Joss Whedon so this little mini-show rocked.

And I CAN’T BUY IT DAMMIT.

Boo, hiss. Or Grr, Arg, whatever.

I have always been a vegetable fan. Most fruit is a take it or leave it situation with me. The biggest exception is if I’m faced with blueberries or raspberries. I can eat those until I’m on the verge of puking. Other fruits, not so much. But vegetables. I love vegetables. Zucchini is my favorite overall but I love a lot of different vegetables and those that I don’t love? I usually at least like them well enough. I never met a vegetable I wouldn’t eat.

Except THE BEET.

Oh my god, I hate beets. Seriously. I have bad memories of beets from my childhood. I always liked them pickled, but cooked, hot beets? Eww. Totally disgusting. I used to try to choke some down at supper time whenever one of my grandmothers would make them but in the end I was always so relieved and grateful that my family did not believe in forcing my sister and I to clear our plates. Because I just couldn’t eat them.

For two decades I have refused to eat them and could get almost violent in my descriptions as to how much I completely hate beets. And yet for some reason, when I went to the fruit and vegetable store this week, I said, “hey! Beets are only 99 cents for a bunch! Let’s get some!”

I blame it on Carol who shows us her weekly CSA share, which often contains beets, and her ongoing quest to find ways to serve them without being revolting. I also blame Dara who ALSO shows us her CSA share (and dammit, I want in on that next summer please and thank you) and on top of it, showed me a way to make roasted beets which are more palatable.

See, both my grandmothers, while having several tasty dishes that I loved to eat, basically subscribed to the British School Of Cooking Vegetables – boil the shit out of everything. To this day I still laugh at the memory of each of them starting to boil a pot of vegetables an HOUR before supper would be ready. All vegetables were mush. To be honest, it’s a miracle I like vegetables at all, really. They would have shuddered to eat my veggies, which are usually at least still retaining a little crispiness.

I decided to let go of my horror over beets and give them a try. After all, they were 99 cents, it’s not like it would be a huge waste of money if I still hated them, and they’re so incredibly good for you. I also reminded myself that I spent my entire life thinking I hated lamb because I just couldn’t eat it when my grandmother on my dad’s side cooked it. It turns out there’s another school called the British School Of Cooking Things Until They’re Really Dry and I was shocked the first time I tried a bite of George’s lamb chop at an office Christmas party one year because it was totally delicious.

I roasted those beets for two hours because they were fairly big, and I nervously served them with supper. We were having rotisserie chicken, some cheesy noodles, and steamed cauliflower with shredded cheese so I knew I had plenty to eat even if I still couldn’t deal with the beets.

The kids didn’t like them much. George loved them. Me? I’ll probably never be able to claim to LOVE beets, but I liked them well enough to eat two of them with supper. The salt I added helped a bit. They were really okay and I’ll make them again. It’s a big step for me. It’s like I’ve just tentatively made friends with my biggest enemy.

Some day I’ll have to try the Indian roasted beets that Carrie wrote about. I figure between my new acceptance of beets and my absolute love of any food from India, I should be okay with those.

Did you have a food that you hated as a kid and have come to accept now that you’re an adult?

Must get cake flour to try this chocolate cake that’s ready in five minutes.

Note to self – Make this Southwest Layered Salad some day.