walking, my least favorite alternative fuel

But I did it. Thursday night I walked the girls to Franklin park for their Thursday night concert in the park. I walked home, too. pushing a double stroller. I survived. Today we're heading up for the Folk Life Festival. It's one of our favorite things about Yakima. You know you should move when a one-weekend event is the best thing about a town. I think by the time we end up moving I'm going to hate this place. I took my girls to Glenwood Square yesterday for the Melody Lane Summer Day Camp performance. It was cute, but the mall is ridiculous. It's empty and deserted. Less than 50% occupied. In a shopping culture, how can a mall be empty? Simple, because it's in Yakima, a town where over 60% of residents qualify for medical and food stamp assistance. This particular mall tries to appeal to the upper crust of society by housing specialty stores. For some businesses, it works. I have a particular beef with the 4D ultrasound clinic. My $125 ultrasound ended up cositn me over $500 because the local lady wouldn't allow me to have one without a Doctor's consent. Her policy stated "caregiver" and I was seeing a midwife who approved and signed her waiver form. Pregnancy isn't a disease, There's nor eason to see a doctor. If the lady is in the business of giving recreational ultrasounds, and I have given her everything her insurance policy needs to service me, then get over it. "Mommy's Treasure" she calls herself. I'd have a lot more treasure if I didn't drive 300 miles to Bellevue just to find out my 6th child was ANOTHER GIRL. Between the gas, the parking and the fact that whenever you drive 5 kids 300 miles you'll HAVE to feed them, the day cost a small treasure. It was fun, though. We celebrated G2's 2nd birthday at the Rainforest Cafe and had a great time.

Biodiesel is going to be a no go

He's building a hydrogen fuel cell instead. This is a device that separates the H2 from the O and allows a vehicle to be run on water. A friend of ours informed me that her husband ordered a kit to make a device like this- he said it was from this company, and that it wasn't making much of a difference. He speculated that i was because he had fuel injection and that the engine was reading the oxygen level wrong and that he could increase his mileage by making an adjustment to his carburetor. (I think this is what he said) Anyway, I spoke with him today and he said he had made the adjustments and that he was still not experiencing a significant boost in his mileage, although the car seemed to have more power.

He mentioned that he had seen the hydrogen myth busted on mythbusters. My heart sunk, I love mythbusters. I had to check it out. They did, in fact, declare on mythbusters that it was busted, but anyone who watches the show knows that sometimes you're shouting at the TV saying "But what about..." I know they try to address everything, but busting 2 myths in 30 minutes doesn't leave time to explore every scientific possibility.

When I read the transcripts form the show, I was bummed to see that they weren't testing the theory, but the available technology. They ordered a kit or directions online and didn't build their own device. Instead of racking my very non-scientific brain to figure out the other possibilities, I just clicked on one of the many other links that came up when I googled "mythbusters hydrogen fuel" and was happily surprised to find an environmental blogger had created a whole post about debunking the mythbusters episode

So we're back to square one. My husband is blessed with stubborn-ness and won't be told that it isn't possible. How many light bulbs did Edison make before he got it right?

Cheaper than driving

I was looking at services to move our car from one side of the state to the other. I came across Auto Transportation Worldwide and they have a neat little calculator thing on their site that allows you to select the city you're starting in and the city you're ending in, pick the type of vehicle you're transporting and baddabingbaddabang it calculates the cost of having your vehicle loaded up on one of those car-carriers to be delivered. It's a great idea if you're... moving... ahem. Not that we're actually going to end up moving any time soon, I'm just saying...

It's also cool in case you find a car you wanna buy on the other side of the country or something. I know a lot of vintage car collectors have their vehicles transported around the country to various specialists for repairs or fancy detail work. They also do boats and RV's

I can't imagine how some people manage to move all the way across the country when they have two cars, a camper, a boat, etc. I think it would be so much easier to just have one of these guys haul your vehicles and fly to the new place. Wouldn't that be so much nicer than driving and pulling it all across the country yourself, Especially with kids, this seems so much smarter. I wonder what kind of fuel they're using.

day trip- shopping

I realize that technically a day spent shopping with 2/6 of my kids might not count as a road trip, but the fact is., it was like 500 degrees out and I was so dizzy from the heat that we had to stop at
McDonalds to get something salty to eat and some water (I have a medical salt issue- I need to eat it or I'll pass out from the heat.) and a hand full of salt is gross. So we got a dish of ice cream to go with it. I originally took this picture to show what a rip-off the ice cream was. $2.50 for 2 little scoops of ice cream at McDonalds, I could have gone to Baskin Robbins and gotten more ice cream than that.

The next pictures are of our baby eating her first french fry. Did you know that the most-consumed-vegetable for children under 18 months is the french fry. Sick, isn't it. I would never have thought of a french fry as a vegetable. For the record, her most consumed vegetable is the carrot, followed by broccoli, and then bananas. Not that bananas are a vegetable. She also eats oatmeal. Steel-cut, not rolled. In case it matters. It sure tastes better.

Running errands with a bunch of little munchkins

I have no advice in this department. Here's what I do; bring an older kid (they are 11 and 14) and leave her in the car with the littler kids while I run inside and take care of things as quickly as possible.

Yesterday, however, I had the opportunity to take my 4 littlest ones to Taco Bell. I wrote about it here, as part of the "Life doesn't suck as much as I thought Thursday" meme from Mrs Fussypants. She, by the way, rocks.

Being alone in public with a 7, 5, 2 and 7 month old was kind of.... like being unexpectedly poked with needles. In your sleep.

We're standing in line and I ask everyone "Burrito or Taco?" They all answer (at the same time) and I replay each voice in my head as they carry on so I can take an organized tally. 1 burrito with no sauce and no onion, 1 burrito with no onion and 1 taco. I plan to impulsively get whichever value meal catches my eye when we get up front. I send 7 yr old to reserve a table for us & tell the other girls to stay with me. They all leave in different directions. There's no clean table to be had so they all return to me to report their findings in the investigation.

We get to the front of the line & they're still talking about wrappers and trays and cups and someone didn't eat a whole burrito.

Then, they see a sign up front with other meals, we end up getting 2 chips& cheese, 1 burrito with no sauce and no onion, and I get a value meal with a mexican pizza & two tacos. I treat them with a mango/strawberry juice.

The lady takes forever to come clean a table for us. If I had baby wipes with me, I would have cleaned the table all by myself. I hate it when I go to the register to say "Please just give me the towel and I'll wipe it down myself" and she says- as if she's sparing me the trouble of wiping the table- "Oh no, it's OK, I'll do it (when I'm done with this...) I don't mind wiping a darn table down, I mind standing up in a dirty dining room while the kids run around because there's no where to sit. To be honest, I could have cleaned every one of the tables faster than she did anyways. While I waited for my food. Whatever, moms can do that sort of thing.