Lydia Archives - Page 26 of 50 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 147: Oh, nuts!

This doesn’t alter our protocol in terms of looking for allergens in foods.

When she was about three, we discovered that the Daughter was allergic to peanuts. We discovered this after we ascertained that she’d had peanut butter (one sandwich, one cookie) under someone else’s care.

Frustratingly, we had been following the then-conventional wisdom to have her avoid the legume. Current thinking is that she should have been introduced to them earlier.

This spring, she was retested for peanuts, and she is still allergic to them, though her reaction was less than the last time she was checked. She’s not a good candidate for those peanut allergy cures you may have seen in the news.

Worse, she also tested positive this last visit for several tree nut allergies and now must avoid having them as well. This doesn’t alter our protocol in terms of looking for allergens in foods, though. Since peanuts and tree nuts are often processed in the same place, we’ve been preemptively avoiding those as well. Has THIS backfired?

Her doctor says, at her age, she is likely to have both of these allergies for the rest of her life. No change to medication – still keeping the Epi-pen and Benadryl at the ready, at same doses.

This has to be a drag for her because it sets her apart from others. Still, with all the various allergies to foods in our extended family, to gluten, and to dairy, she’s at least in the same boat as her cousins, e.g.

The Lydster, Part 146: art and artist

So This happened back in February 2016; text courtesy of the Albany School News Network:

“Student works inspired by the famed modern art collection at the Empire State Plaza will be showcased through March 20 in the plaza’s South Concourse.

“Some 258 pieces of art by City School District of Albany students from kindergarten through eighth grade are on display at the plaza in celebration of National Youth Art Month. The display consists of artwork from all 15 district elementary and middle schools, as well from 11 other Capital Region school districts.

“On display are student reinterpretations of the modern masters whose works are featured on the walls and in the spaces of the plaza.” The Daughter had two pieces in the show.

The first design was supposedly in the style of Calvert Coggeshall (1907-1990), an abstract painter from Whitesboro, Oneida County in upstate New York.

The second item was reportedly reminiscent of Kenneth Nolan (1924-2010), originally from Ashville, North Carolina. Our friend Alexis, who took the pictures, and I thought it was more like some of the work of Jasper Johns, born in 1930 in Augusta, Georgia.

The Daughter had heard of NONE of these artists. She was just doing what interested her.

The medium for these pieces was duct tape. She had made little purses made of the material for her mother and a friend this past Christmas.

There was to be a group picture of the young artists present at the Empire State Plaza. The Daughter was reluctant to participate for some reason until her teacher, Ms. Rhatigan, who I met for the first time that day, encouraged her to do so.

Incidentally, “The Empire State Plaza Art Collection consists of 92 modern art paintings, sculptures, and tapestries that were bought in the late 1960s to early ’70s, including works from Alexander Calder, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.”

Her flag piece was also chosen for the Albany Institute of History and Art’s school show in May.

The Lydster, Part 145: Hip hop

“It’s SO annoying, but it’s still fun.”

The youth of our church, ages 6 to 18, did a hip hop performance of original readings, one extant reading, plus three dance numbers, and one song, at the beginning of March.

The Daughter’s first contribution was like pulling teeth. She was supposed to write a poem about her good qualities, but she was so self-effacing, I sat with her to suggest what she was good at, such as dancing, and being a good friend.

In a collective piece called Church and Family Rule, she ended up saying: “Mom: tucks me into bed at night. Dad: watches the news with me at midnight.”

Now, what she had ORIGINALLY written was that I watch the news with her, then something entirely different about our cats Midnight and Stormy. So, NO, Albany, I don’t watch the news with my daughter at midnight, unless she’s having insomnia.

Her solo reading, though, was particularly popular with the crowd. I was glad I had heard it a few times before she delivered it. And I had NOTHING to do with its composition, except, apparently, as its inspiration.

My dad and I dance to The Beatles.
Well, I wouldn’t call what he was doing DANCING, but something like that.
I dance to I Saw Her Standing There, Help, Hey Jude, and Revolution.
My dad sings, “She was just seventeen if you know what I mean.”
And as soon as he starts to sing, I start to sing.
It’s SO annoying, but it’s still fun.
We do it a couple of times a year, usually around the Beatles’ birthdays.

SHE added the extra “if” to the song lyric.

It was well-received by the audience that was clearly not a traditional hip hop demographic.

I’ve grown accustomed to her face

This is wedding anniversary #17.

The last week in April was a school vacation. The Wife and The Daughter were going to go to visit Philadelphia to see one of the former’s sisters-in-law and nieces.

I was thinking, “Hey, this will be my chance to tackle all the things I never get a chance to do.” I’d read, and catch up on blogging – it was taking a beating that month – and all sorts of Roger stuff.

I wouldn’t have to negotiate using the computer, or hear about Dancing with the Stars – I REALLY don’t care!

More than that I figured I would sleep better because I wouldn’t have to worry about someone hogging the sheets. And I didn’t have to get up with alarm.

Much to my surprise, I slept terribly all week. The first night I had this weird dream about trying to hide an affair from my wife; the “other woman” was a married lesbian friend of mind. In the dream, it was an exhausting exercise. And when I awoke, I felt pretty much the same way.

By the time I saw my family Thursday night, I felt like – do you remember those old clothes washers with wringers, like that one pictured? You put the clothes through the wringer to get rid of excess water, making the drying process on the clothesline so much easier. The phrase being put through the wringer came to mind.

So I’m pretty self-sufficient. I can feed myself, and take care of the cats, go shopping. The family’s been away before, but this time…I don’t know how, but it was different. I missed them more, for some reason.

Anyway, this is wedding anniversary #17. Now that Downton Abbey is over, I have to struggle to buy presents, because The Wife remains difficult to shop for. I’ll think of something…

I’ve grown accustomed to her face Song cue

The Lydster: Feeling the Bern

I swear I saw Joe Bruno.

On Monday, April 11, not one but THREE Presidential candidates were going to be in the Capital District of New York State: John Kasich (R), Bernie Sanders (D), and Donald Drumpf (R). A day or two before, The Daughter started wheedling me – why didn’t she bug her mother? – to see one of them, the one alphabetically last.

I said no. I said no because I was afraid she might get hurt. She said that no one was going to hurt a little girl, but I noted that she is taller than most adult women. She should watch him on television. (I was also afraid I might get hurt, but I didn’t bring that up.)

Her counter-proposal was to see Bernie Sanders. I noted that he too would be on TV, and he was speaking during the school day.

“But it would be educational!”

She wanted ME to contact her teacher to ask if she could go, but I said she could go if SHE asked her teacher and she said yes; she can be shy in these matters.

Monday morning, I had to get a blood test, which I ended up going to TWICE because I forgot my insurance card the first time. I kept checking my email to see if her teacher contacted me. The Wife came home early – she had an eye test in the early afternoon – and she checked HER email, where she received a positive response from the teacher to MY inquiry.

By this time, it was already noon. The Washington Armory opened at 11 a.m., and the rally was at 2 p.m. I got the Daughter out of school. The Wife dropped us a block from the Armory, because I figure the traffic at Washington and Lark would be crazy, and so it was.

We went to the end of the line, which was down Washington Avenue, across Dove Street, up Elk Street to behind the armory; had we realized, we would have gone the shorter route.

I engaged a young man, 33, behind us in conversation. We decided that this was very educational for the Daughter, because it addressed sociology (the nature of the crowd), history, political science, meteorology (it was very windy, raining briefly; his girlfriend was freezing), and undoubtedly other disciplines.

A green car drove by a couple times, with Drumpf USA, etc. painted in splotchy white, as though he’d used a huge bottle of Wite-Out. It had two huge American flags.

Even as the Armory was in sight, I knew the capacity of the Washington Armory was 3000 for basketball games, maybe 1000 more for something like this, and that we probably wouldn’t get in. This turned out to be the case.

Still, we stuck around. I ran into my friends Dan and Lynne. I bought The Daughter a Feel the Bern T-shirt and a couple buttons.

She started taking notes, as we listened to the activities inside via a couple speakers that kept cutting out. The audio in front stopped playing music, and we heard, “I’m sorry the venue wasn’t big enough.”

BERNIE CAME OUT!

He gave a seven-minute speech on his main topics: end fracking, Medicare for all, free college, climate change is real. “We can’t spend trillions in Iraq while we leave our cities at home.” Some families are spending 50-60% on housing each month. There’s too much police violence. We need a $15 per hour minimum wage.

He noted that movements develop from the bottom up: trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights.

After that, we caught a bus and went home, and watched the last 50 minutes of the speech on TV. We also saw Kasich speak in Troy.

The Wife took us out to dinner; it was quite good. In another room, I swear I saw Joe Bruno, the former state Senate Majority Leader, surrounded by a dozen others.

The Daughter was trying to rush The Wife home, because she (and I) wanted to watch The Donald. He didn’t say anything in that way he generally does: read some reviews. All in all, an excellent day.

The next day, The Daughter confessed that she didn’t REALLY wanted to see Donald, she wanted to see Bernie, but used the DJT request as an opening salvo in what she REALLY wanted. Well played, Daughter, but I would have said yes to Bernie, eventually, even without the chicanery.