October 6-13

Last Friday, some women from church took the girls and me to see the sunflowers.  I didn't even know we had a giant field of sunflowers.  There was a hailstorm earlier this summer, so the flowers were apparently shorter than usual.  That turned out to be a good thing, though, because they were more Olivia's height.

Olivia knows her ABCs.  I did not realize this.  She listens to them on Pandora, but other than that we haven't really worked on them.  One day, though, she was singing in the stroller, as she is wont to do, and I very clearly heard, "LMNOP Q R S, T U V, W X, Y and Z."  I listened when she went through a second time (which is pretty much inevitable), and she also knew A through H.  I, J, and K simply don't exist in her alphabet.  Anyway.  She practices her ABCs periodically, usually mixed in with Baa, Baa, Black Sheep (but never with Twinkle, Twinkle, oddly enough).  This week I also discovered that she can identify B, D, E, L, M, N, O, R, S, T, and W.  Those are the only ones I tried before she got bored and I ran out of space on my writing surface.  You will notice, though, that using those letters you can spell "Browns," which makes her father happy.  Actually, I'm guessing that one reason she knows B, N, O R, S, and W is because of the large wooden letters on the wall in our room at Steve and Murry's house.  :)

Speaking of Steve and Murry's house, we were there all week.  I had rehearsal almost every night in Lima, so we just moved in with them to cut the driving time in half.  Bryan was able to work from home one day and stayed at our house instead of driving back another night, so that helped with his commute, also.  Everyone had work still, so the girls and I just hung out and pretended we were at our house.  We even made it to the local storytime on Friday.

I'm awarding the points for Gretchen's sleep to Bryan and Stephanie.  10 to Bryan for suggesting that we just keep her up when she's crabby instead of letting her take a late afternoon nap, and 15 to Stephanie for informing me of the day care schedule: wake up, 2 hours awake, nap, 3 hours awake, nap, 4 hours awake, bed.  We don't get the numbers right all the time, but we've found that getting close to the 4 hour mark at night helps significantly.  I feel a little silly awarding points this week since Gretchen's bed-time routine has been pretty lousy because we're not at home and I've left before she goes to bed every night.  We had a good thing going, though, so I'm hoping we can return to it once we're home again next week.

Monday night I left for orchestra a little early so that I would have time to find everything.  I grabbed a couple of runzas on my way out the door, put in a CD that wasn't little kid songs, and munched and sang my way down the freeway.  Traffic was normal except for a tow truck on the side of the road, and I remember passing a police car and thinking, "I hope it's okay to eat and drive at the same time."  This was immediately followed by two thoughts I always have when passing police cars: 1. "Why are people slowing way down?  We're allowed to drive the speed limit.  *checks speedometer*  Only 65 (in a newly 70 mph zone).  I'm good."  2. "What if I got pulled over and the only thing I that came out of my mouth was the lyrics to the song I was singing at the time?"

One minute later, I got pulled over.  On the plus side, I didn't quote song lyrics.  As I waited for the cop to come to the window, I began regretting the runza I'd been eating as I drove past.  Perhaps it wasn't okay to eat and drive at the same time?  He didn't open with the stereotypical "do you know how fast you were going?", but rather with his own oh-so-original variation: "do you want to tell me why you were driving that speed?"  I glanced at my speedometer, as if the needle now resting on zero would somehow provide me with a recollection of blazing fast speeds, and asked, "65?"  Now I was worrying that maybe I'd get a ticket for going too slowly, driving along at the glacial speed of 65 in a 70 zone.  "I clocked you going 87, ma'am."  ... 87?!  87?!!  I don't even know how to drive 87.  It scares me.  It's like being on a roller coaster, only I have to steer, too.  I generally have to expend effort to drive 70, hence the 65 in the 70 zone.  I explained as much, but he insisted that he'd checked my speed "at least 15 times" as I was coming over the bridge (side note: the only bridge at this section of road is one you go under, not over).  Apparently I was passing a semi and that's when I sped up.  He knew because he caught the semi going 55, and I was the only other car there, so I must have been the 87.  I asked if he was sure it was me, thinking maybe he saw some other light-colored minivan, but he thought I was implying that maybe I was going 55 and the semi was the one doing 87, so he repeated his explanation.  I told him that I hadn't passed anyone yet this drive, and that the only time I'd even been in the left lane was when I moved over for the stopped tow truck (and you thought that detail was unimportant!), but he just repeated "15 times."  All the time he kept telling me that I couldn't drive that fast, because "it's just not safe."  (Another side note: I KNOW IT'S NOT SAFE, THAT'S WHY I ONLY DRIVE 65!)  I asked if I could contest the ticket, and he said I could go to court and tell them whatever I want, which filled me with great confidence in our judicial system.  I could tell the truth or not and he didn't care because it wouldn't matter against his radar gun.  He took my license and went back to his car to write a ticket.  I called Bryan and told him I always wondered exactly how a person could prove they weren't speeding if a cop said they were, but I never thought I'd get to figure it out myself.  He told me to ask if they ever checked the calibration of the radar guns.  The cop came back, and I asked about the gun.  He told me he checks it at the beginning and end of each shift.  Then he handed me my license back and said "I'm 99.9% sure it was you, but I only write a ticket if I'm 100% sure.  Your record is clean, so I'm just giving you a warning.  Be safe."  I thanked him and drove away, now making sure to go no faster than 64, just in case.

As I completed my drive, I had a revelation: We have one of those monitoring devices installed in our car for insurance purposes!  Our old one (with All State) didn't tell exact speeds, but it told us the top speed for each trip and made special note of all speeds over 80.  I hadn't logged in to our new one (with Nationwide) yet, but it must have a similar data log.  The next morning, I figured out how to check the data on the new one and looked up my trip.  It turns out that Nationwide's charts and graphs are better and more detailed than All State's, so I know exactly how fast I was going at every minute of my drive.  My top speed?  68.  Take that, Mr. Policeman.  Your 99.9% is looking pretty weak.  Also, I figured out how to prove to a judge that you weren't speeding: have one of these devices.  I think Nationwide only lets us keep it for 6 months, but there are commercial ones you can buy (usually to monitor teen drivers) if your insurance carrier doesn't supply one.  (A bonus to getting it through your insurance: most companies offer a 5-10% discount for the first 6 months just for agreeing to have it plugged into your car.  Your discount for later terms is calculated based on your driving habits and could be as high as 30%.  Even if it's close to zero (like ours is because we drive too many miles over the course of a year), that's still no worse than what you were paying originally.)

End exciting story and shameless product plug.  I should become an insurance agent or something.

Orchestra went well.  I worried at first that I'd be struggling to keep up (for lack of a better term) with all the official, actually-in-the-symphony-and-not-just-subs musicians, especially since I thought my Lima audition was weak.  I'm definitely not the best player there, and there are a lot of performance majors (as opposed to general music majors) with higher degrees than mine from more intimidating schools than Eastern, but I felt like I fit in, especially by the end of the week.  Vaguely related, my stand partner is also a sub and was also at Springfield auditions this year.  She said that she thinks they don't actually have an open viola spot (which would make sense since they already have 7 violists) even though they keep saying they do.  I accept this as an appropriate reason for not choosing me for the (not really existent) spot even though my audition was fabulous.

Pictures:

The sunflowers.  Also a caterpillar that we found:

Proof that I was right: