Murder in the Microwave

Or: How I Would Rather Read Than Do Housework

I made a big batch of chili at the beginning of last week, and, as the days went by and leftovers were consumed, the microwave began to look...disturbing. Someone forgot to use a cover when reheating a serving of the tomato based chili, and then the next person figured there was no point, and so on. The splatters accumulated, streaking down the side walls, pooling on the rotating plate, dotting the ceiling. It looked like a horror show. I was alarmed, and I have a high tolerance for living with dirt.

I considered showing a "before" photo to go with this post. But who wants to see someone else's dirty microwave? So here is the "after" pic:

The I Hate to Clean method of cleaning the microwave

I give credit for the pristine state of the microwave to my mother-in-law's method. There is no elbow grease required, which makes cleaning the microwave probably my favorite chore. Total time is about 22 minutes. 20 of those minutes you can read your current book. "Leave me alone, I'm cleaning the microwave," will not be believed, yet it will be true.

• Put two cups of water in a microwave safe dish. Add a slice of lemon. 
• The next step will vary depending on your microwave -- you will want to keep an eye on things the first time around -- turn on the microwave for ten minutes on high. The water will boil and boil and boil. About a cup of water will become steam. 
• After the ten minutes is up, resist the temptation to open the microwave. Let the steam stay in there for another ten minutes.
• Now you can open the microwave. Carefully remove the water vessel (it will still be hot), and the rotating plate, if you have one. Use a rag to clean the sides, ceiling, and floor. Wipe down the plate, wash with soap and water if you like. Replace plate in microwave. 
• Admire your work. Go back to your book. Pretend it was such a chore that you simply cannot do another one today.

The lemon slice is important here. It doesn't have to be a lemon. It could be a lime. It could be a toothpick. Something has to go in with there to to prevent the water from superheating and exploding. Really! DO NOT use this method with plain water. I did accidentally superheat water once, and I count myself very lucky that the explosion happened before I opened the microwave door. Lemon, however, makes the microwave smell nice.

PS You do not have to read a book during those twenty minutes. You could surf the web and watch cute cat videos, like this one, instead. Or meditate. Whatever you choose, relax! You're cleaning the microwave!

Best Card Trick Ever, or Algebra Without Tears

I am not, and have never been, pop culture's idea of the homeschool mom: sit the kids at the table to work through lessons, have them do chores to keep the house spotless, make three healthy meals a day to support mental and physical stamina. I mean, I try, but let's talk reality. And how far I have fallen. These days, I have farmed out both math and French lessons to the girls' favorite teacher. Want to guess who it is?

Hello, iPad. Please keep your charge until Kathy has finished that level of Duolingo.

Taryn has been learning algebra with an app called Dragon Box. Multiple friends had given it rave reviews, so despite its price -- $5.99 for an app, really? -- I installed it on all of our iPads. (Yes, each of us has one. Yes, that is excessive. My husband is an early adopter and technophile. We have held off on the 3D printer, at least.)

Screen capture from Dragon Box. The goal for this puzzle is to isolate the box on the left, using the cards available at the bottom of the screen. 

 When Taryn finished all the levels, even the bonus rounds, of the game, I thought it would be straightforward to jump from solving equations on the iPad to solving them with pencil and paper. 

Screen capture from a bonus level puzzle. Don't tell the kids, it's ALGEBRA.

She was up for it, but at the first attempt to solve an equation, the tears began to flow. Uh oh.

The rules of the game mirror the rules of algebra. The jump from the game's tactile and visual solution of a puzzle, to the process of solving for x on paper, was too big for Taryn.

Feeling angry about algebra. Let's take a break.

She needed a stepping stone to make the transition from iPad game to real math.

I puzzled over this for a while. Could I print out cards that look like the items in Dragon Box and play with those? Well, yes, I could, but I didn't really want to take the time to design, print, cut, and laminate a zillion cards. For some reason, it was playing out in my head as a Pinterest-worthy project.

Simplify, simplify. Could I skip the part where I design the cards on the computer? Maybe just draw some by hand? That's an option. What are the essentials? Cards that have pictures, and for each card its "opposite." The game calls the picture card opposites "night" cards. The numbers and symbols get the standard negative sign in front of them.

More musing. Earlier in the day, the girls and I had talked about the phrase "Being in the red." How in a ledger, you might see the negative numbers written in red. How you don't want your bank card balance [a topic for another post] to be red, but black.

Red, black. Cards. Pictures. Numbers. Wait, this sounds familiar. Oh!

A standard deck of cards becomes a tool to learn algebra

I pulled out a standard deck of cards, and sorted them by number. I gave Taryn these rules:

• Black number cards are have positive value: spades and clubs are numbers 1-10.
• Red number cards have negative value: hearts and diamonds are numbers -1 through -10.
• Ace and face cards are variables, with positive or negative value depending on suit: Ace of hearts represents -a, Jack of clubs represents j, and so on.

I Promise You Won't Suffer

I Promise Not To Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail by Gail D. Storey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You know this book has to include some suffering, despite its title. A memoir of hiking the PCT would not be complete without some major hurting.

The trail starts in California at the Mexican border, and ends 2,663 miles later at Washington's Canadian border. That number speaks for itself: my feet are sore just thinking about hiking that far. Add in walking through desert, climbing alpine heights, crossing ice fields, and fording raging streams. And bears!

The PCT hiker's interior journey can be just as full of pain as her physical experience. That's why I keep reading memoirs of the trail. This author had a lot going on in her head before she started the trip, and her time on the PCT brought many anxieties to the surface.

On this list is her dying mother, who had promised to be alive when the author finished the trail. Another is her husband, whose dream inspired the couple to sell their house and live on the PCT for six months.

One question I have when I start one of these memoirs is, "Will the author finish the trip?" I won't answer that question here, for fear of spoiling it. I will say, that in the end, the journey's weight is in the author's interior transformation. It's a good addition to the list of Pacific Crest Trail memoirs.

View all my reviews

Other memoirs of the Pacific Crest Trail include:

• The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind -- and Almost Found Myself -- on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Dan White (which I read and enjoyed)
• Wild, by Cheryl Strayed (here's a link to her interview on NPR)
• The Trail Life: How I Loved it, Hated it, and Learned from it, by Julie Urbanski
• Skywalker: Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Bill Walker

Those last three are on my to-read list. Have you read any of these? Or better, hiked a part of the trail? Been a thru hiker on the AT, or attempted any journey like these? I'd love to hear about your experiences, first-hand or otherwise.

VentureQuest: mountain biking mayhem and a shocking finish

Running is my exercise of choice. Mostly I run on my own, sometimes a route from my house around a lake, sometimes on the treadmill while I catch up on DVRed shows. I usually run a couple of local 5K races each year. The occasional 10K sneaks onto my calendar too. I like my running routine, but sometimes I need to bust out of the usual and do something my body does not expect. 

This morning I woke up at 5am to hit the road for VentureQuest, an adventure race with a mix of orienteering, trail running, mountain biking, and canoeing. I was one of three on a co-ed team of racers, each with our strengths, and all of us with one weakness: mountain biking.

My lovely steed on the left, with orange transition bag beneath

We signed up for this race months ago, so we had time to practice biking off-road. We just never got around to it. This wasn't the first adventure race for two of us, so only one third of our team could claim to be a complete novice. It shouldn't have been any kind of surprise that the mountain biking leg would be the stone in our path to finishing this race.

Stone in our path. More like the railroad tie in our single track. Followed by a steep downhill hairpin turn with a ravine one the other side.

I never shifted out of my next to lowest gear, yet time and again I pushed that bike up a hill. Worse, I rolled it down hills. Worst, we resorted to something we had promised ourselves not to do: bushwhack with the bikes. 

When we should have been making progress on the trail, we started having déjà vu. That darned railroad tie reappeared in front of us. How did that happen? We continued on, only to encounter it a third time. I won't speak for the guys on my team, but I was close to crying. It was disheartening. We were lost with a map and a compass, on marked trails, and we couldn't find our checkpoints. Our allotted time had run out half an hour ago, and we were losing points with each passing minute.

I'll skip to the end, where we emerged from the woods with grunts of relief, dropped the bikes in the transition area, and spent our remaining energy trotting to the finish. I was a mess, with bloodied hand, arm, knee, and ankle, but getting off the bike felt great. 

We had not completed the race, as we missed three checkpoints. We were forty-four minutes late, at the cost of five points per minute penalty. Whatever. There was watermelon, pizza, GORP, and the best Coca-Cola I'd ever tasted. We had arrived in the middle of the awards ceremony, and I cheered in between bites as I chowed down.

"Third place in the sport level, three person, co-ed division goes to Beer Guts in Spandex." 

What? I looked at my teammates, both with beer guts and wearing spandex, true to our team name. 

We laughed our way to the podium, where we each received a beer glass -- "3rd Place 2013" -- and a fleece beanie with the racing company's logo. We congratulated the other teams that placed ahead of us, and I showed off my wounds as I smiled big for the picture.

Team Beer Guts in Spandex: done is good. Let's go home.

***

A note on EX2, the company that put on this race, and orange wristbands

I've done a lot of races with a lot of different race management companies, and EX2 stands out. They have put on the absolute best races I've participated in. 

One of their longtime volunteers suffered a catastrophic injury while downhill biking with his family. In our group pictures today, we wore and showed off orange wristbands as a tribute to "Scud." To read more of his story, and to support his recovery, visit the family's blog, www.scudfries.org.