She pretty much always goes in a potty now, big or small, number one or number two. We put her in a diaper for night time, naps, and outings still. Even if she is in a diaper, though, she will ask to go to the potty. For the outings it depends on where we are going as I feel constantly concerned now about proximity to a bathroom. We went to a few shops today and she asked to go twice and we pulled both off no trouble, with a diaper. One pee and one poo in a public bathroom. She even sang a rather loud and rambunctious rendition of the "I have to poop" song and then later followed with the all time favorite "I had a poop" song. Charming.

I think I will refrain from discussing all the goddamn princess panties for now. Shaddup.

We are having some heat up this way. L woke up this morning and the first thing out of her mouth was: it's warm mommy. Second thing was: it's warm enough for the pool mommy. I've been telling her since, oh, christmas that she has to wait until the snow melts to use her pool. Then when the snow melted and she quite quickly pointed out that she would now be needing her pool I had to modify it to tell her that it turns out that the snow has to melt AND it has to be really warm out too. My reply this morning was: you're damn right girly, it's hot enough for a pool. So we broke out the pool. Wonderful. She frolicked whilst I lounged in the shade doing crosswords. This is fucking great. I heart kiddie pools.

Meanwhile, in uh oh land, something is eating my zucchini. It's all holey. I'm not please and am plotting my wrathful vengeance. If anyone knows what likes zucchini and how to destroy them please let me know. If it helps, the zucchini destroyer seems to enjoy a cucumber leaf or two too, but hasn't touched the snow peas.

Newsflash: I suck at flowers. With all the suckage of sucking, I suckity suck suck. Sigh. I think I will go out next week and buy some that someone else has nurtured to maturity. I suspect I will kill those too.

My summer research students have all started and are mostly kicking ass. With a mere week under our belts there has been surprisingly few hiccups. They have a terrific work ethic, a great group dynamic so far, and are a lot of fun to be around. It's going to be a swell summer. I have a paper deadline of Sunday. Oops. I doubt I have to tell you how far behind I am on it. Not for lack of trying though. I've been working my tushie off on it but the bottom line is that I had other folks at that other place helping witht the tissue and it was not good and I never felt confident in the data.

I reran the whole thing. But it took two tries because the first time, after taking THREE ENTIRE FUCKING DAYS to sort out tissue for the stain I fried it. Literally fucking fried it. It was the first time I used the oven in the lab and I'm not that much of a rube that I didn't test out its functionality first. I totally did. Looked stable as hell to me and I was pleased. Until I took the tissue out the first day to discover that what should be a hot to touch but carryable tray of glass bottles with clear liquid and discernable brain slices in them instead was SCALDING HOT, smelled like ASS GARBAGE, was YELLOW, and the tissue was scalding hot ass garbage yellow DEBRIS. Only then did I notice that the thermometer read up to 300 deg Celsius. The 100 mark was inside the oven and I didn't see it and the 200 mark was in the middle and around the side and I didn't see it. It was supposed to be at 65 C and instead it was at 165 C. A rather large difference. RATHER FUCKING LARGE INDEED.

So i resorted and spent the weekend redoing it and thank fuck it worked awesome. The stain kicked ass and the tissue looks great. It was run 3 times at Duke and it never worked out. I think things were getting sloppy there. Reagents being left out, dishes not washed well, poor mixing and timing. I'll admit I never ran it in full myself. I guess I should have. You know, in my spare time. It's a weird project anyway but at least now I have data I know I can believe in no matter what comes out of it. We'll see how that goes.

Alright, bed time. Yes, I am aware of the hour. L is a night owl. But what do we care, she sleeps until 8 or 9 and naps in the afternoon. We love it. But it is going to be seriously painful when school starts. The bus picks kids up on our street at SEVEN FREAKING FORTY. That is wicked twisted. I've heard rumors that schools start at 8. ACK. I have a mind to tell O that if he doesn't want to home school than he can damn well get that child on the bus every day before the crack of dawn. Seriously, yuck.