Lilacs and Lavender: The Colors of Purple

I've been thinking of attaching a purple flower photo to every streak for stroke post.  Looking through my files I am surprised at the number of purple flower photos I've already taken, assuming one is willing to be expansive in one's definition of purple.  It seems I have photos of lilacs that are lavender; lavender that is violet; violets that are white; irises that are plum; and indigo that's plain purple.
These are the kinds of things that I think I would like to sit around and write about some day, but now that I am doing it, find I would really rather go to bed.  Someday.
In the meantime, here's a photo of the boys on Palm Sunday (notice the Hawaiian "palm" shirt).  That was April 12, the north facing lilac had been in full bloom for a few days and it lasted well past Easter when I picked the bouquet.
This lilac has a fabulous scent, and it reminds me of my parents being reminded of their parents.  I never saw (or smelled) my grandmother's lilacs in bloom, but judging by the way my parents speak of them, they must have been something outstanding. Transmitted nostalgia is an odd thing.
The lilac is also not a color I consider lilac.  Much as I like the plant, the discrepancy does bug me some.
In other garden news, some of the asparagus is purple, the west wall roses have just started, I picked my first two south wall peonies and the iris are pretty much in full bloom.

If you are here for personal stroke survivor stories, I'll link to my cerebral palsy diagnosis and in utero stroke diagnosis story (Aster's blog name was Rutherford Robinia before he emerged.  Neither is his actual name.) that will have to do until I post something new.

If you are like my father, you can be assured that Aster's hair was cut before Easter (see May 1 photo of egg dying).

Of What Sould We Be Aware, and Why?

Sparkling Squirrel is, at its best, a place for personal storytelling (and, at its typical, a place where I post photos of my kids so that my in-laws don't think I care only about books and plants), so I feel silly typing up a post about pediatric stroke awareness in general, when I know full well that any of you is capable of clicking on the CHASA link and reading their fact sheets.
I also know that most of you aren't going to read through the fact sheet, and also feel silly blogging up a streak to raise awareness for pediatric stroke without every directly addressing that awareness.

So, briefly:

Of what should you be aware:

• that kids have strokes, and especially right before and right after birth, at fairly high (but still unknown) rates.
•  that pediatric strokes are associated with a suite of other physical, behavioral and cognitive issues (more on these with my personal storytelling later in the month).
• that hand preference in children under two is not normal and should be investigated.
• that, while there is no cure or treatment for (and few known causes of) pediatric stroke, survivors of pediatric stroke may respond very well to therapy, particularly if started early.
• that pediatric stroke; causes, prevention, best practices and even basic rates of occurrence, is very poorly studied.

And why you should be aware of these things:

• because you are an inquisitive person.
• because you care about Aster and our family.
• so that you can respond more knowledgeably and compassionately to pediatric stroke survivors and their families (and perhaps to all people of different abilities).
• so that you can alert others to the signs of pediatric stroke.  Among parents of pediatric stroke survivors, a common theme is that observed delays or unusual hand preferences were not taken seriously (by doctors, relatives, or the parents themselves) and that therapies were delayed because of it.
• so that you can donate to CHASA knowing that the support network is provides is an invaluable service (more on that later in the month).

Back to my grading then gardening.  Have a great day.
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May Day kicks off the Streak for Strokes

Happy May Day!

May your life be filled with spring and flowers rather than Soviet military maneuvers or last ditch distress calls.

May is Pediatric Stroke Awareness Month, and, as with many of the other parents part of CHASA, I'm doing a streak for stroke. Streak for Stroke has been going on for many Mays now, and the nice alliterative phrase has been used to mean many different things, from streaking ones hair to planting a streak of purple flowers, but most commonly used for doing things consistently-- getting a winning streak going.

Pediatric Stroke Survivor and Big Brother Dye Easter Eggs 2014

So, during the month of May, I'm going to blog up a storm, and keep a streak of blogging five days a week for the month.  My intention is that once a week I will write personally about raising a kid with hemiplegia, once a week I'll write (or link to) information about pediatric stroke research, and the remainder will be my normal blog posts-- roots, flowers and books.  I have one guest post lined up by an adult with cerebral palsy lined up and would love to hear of your experiences with strokes, special needs children and cooking with roots.

Please check back often, ask questions and comment.  I'd love to start a discussion and I'm hoping to post often enough that I'll respond in a timely fashion. 

Someday I may even answer the obvious question: why do we need to raise awareness (and money) about pediatric strokes?

But until then, enjoy the flowers. 

Too Windy for Kites

As we were being sand blasted at the park, failing at swinging because of the headwind, I kept trying to think of some way to convey the winds of Weatherford, OK.
I've lived other windy places in my life.  I like wind.  The lack of wind felt eerie in West Virginia, whenever I happened to notice it.  But, it turns out, I like wind in moderation.  There were windy days in Boulder and in Lawrence and in each place I remember a particular day when it felt like one was leaning into a New Yorker cartoon every time one wandered outside.  Walking at a cartoonish angle was memorable in Colorado and Kansas.  Here, well, here it has happened three times in the last month.
Anyway, as I was trying to think of how to convey the wind-- most friends think that I am using sandblasted figuratively-- the kites came in.
There were none and then about 7 p.m. there were thirty Mississippi Kites struggling mightily to stay over the park (rather than going with the flow and summering in, say, Hays, Kansas).  Several of them hit the wrong angle and were blown sideways into flapping masses rather than regal glides.  They make an disturbing whistle and all of the other birds seemed to perk up with indignation.
The kites are the harbinger of finals here.  They arrive in mass one day in late April (yesterday, Saturday, April 26 this year, apparently) and they leave the second week of September.  According to the record on this blog, this is one day later than 2012 and four days earlier than 2013.
The kites have come.  Happy end of the school year.  I just hope that don't get blown away.

Celery Root Salad

I nearly followed the recipe for celery root remoulade (pg. 97 in Roots), just substituting Greek yogurt for the sour cream, celery leaves for the parsley, dill pickles for the cornichons, adding some chopped celery stalk and omitting the tarragon, and it was very good.
I want to try and make a celery root (Apium graveolens var. rapaceum, a.k.a. celariac) soup sometime this year.  I have a very hard time even envisioning a creamy celery root soup because the roots (swollen hypocotyls, according to wikipedia) have the flavor of the stalks with an entirely different texture.  It's a bit disconcerting to me. The stalks are from a different variety than the roots.  The species is in the Apiaceae (Umbelliferae); the parsley and carrot family.

Burdock

Buying burdock made me giggle, as it felt simultaneously foolish and rebellious to be paying for roots of a weed-- particularly one my father so hates.
Following the directions in Roots, I parboiled matchstick size pieces.
And they were still basically wood.
So I chopped them up in the food processor and made lentil miso burdock soup (inspired by, but not actually following, several different recipes in the book).  It tasted like lentil miso soup with ground up boiled toothpicks.
I might try again some time, but I'm not running out to do so.
Burdock, by the way, is the taproot of Arctium, a weed in the Asteraceae.  The hooked projections of the burrs once caught in curly dog fur are allegedly the inspiration for Velcro.  I understand that young leaves are also edible, although also not tasty, and various diets proclaim the roots to be purifying and super-healthy.

It's the snot on the dress pants

Nobody warns you how much more you need to wash your professional clothes.
Sure, anybody conscious has heard stories about babies and their abilities to spew bodily fluids with great gusto and at odd angles. And obviously little kids and Oklahoma red dirt combine for some fantastic stains.  But nobody tells you that, by the time your kids are running around and keeping most fluids where they belong, you will still be doing extra laundry (or never ever wearing your actual professional clothes) because your kids hug you and want to be held, you won't even notice how much you've been snotted upon, and dried mucus shows up shockingly well on black pants.

I've spent a great deal of time recently noting where my time goes and thinking about all the little things that nobody knows are part of my jobs (as teacher, scientist, mother, and me).  I've enumerated many of them in blog posts in my head, from the obvious but overlooked (the paperwork) to the somewhat surprising (I recently spent an hour helping a student, neither in my class or my department, figure out what to wear for a trip to the National Academy of Sciences).  At the moment, however, this has mostly just started to make me wonder about all of the things that everyone else does that would surprise me.

Where does your time go that "wasn't exactly in the job description"?