The Jazz Singer (HINT: It's Me!)

I've been a musician my entire life.  The tiniest violin you've ever seen was literally waiting for me before I was born.  My six older siblings already played - girls on violin and boys on cello - so of course I followed suit.  I started at age two via the Suzuki method, studied with the best teachers, had lots of opportunities to perform and compete, etc. etc.  I'm sure I'll post more on that some time.  Anyway, fast-forward to when I was around 9 or 10.  My oldest two sisters were music majors at BYU (about an hour away) and their life became my obsession.  You can tell you're the youngest child when you and your friends play "college" for fun.  At school I would tell wild college stories (um, that's BYU-rated wild, mind you), probably boring all my friends.  But I didn't know any better.  In my family, the oldest siblings were worshiped and no amount of science fairs or friend birthday parties could compete with whatever they were up to.  Maybe I'll post on that someday too.

I promise I will get to the point.  So those sisters of mine started bringing home all kinds of interesting people on the weekends, and they also brought interesting music!  They had started singing jazz with their roommates or whoever, and would bring home sheet music for my mom to accompany them.  I'll never forget the first time my mom, a very classical pianist (I don't think she'd be offended to be called a purist), sat down to play "Peel Me a Grape," some sexy, comical song they brought home about demanding royal treatment from a lover.  The left hand starts in with a walking 8th-note bass line, which you're obviously supposed to swing.  She played them as straight as can be and everyone busted a gut.  So here was this new genre that my mother didn't even know how to do, and... I liked it, a lot.  I ate it up and sang it every chance I could get.  I learned the easier songs on the piano and would wait until nobody was home to really belt it out.

You have to understand something here.  I come from a family of CLASSICAL musicians.  Like, complete music snobs.  As a kid I would snicker along with the rest of my siblings whenever someone sang something borderline pop-ish at church.  We made faces when people were out of tune.  We acted as though we were better than the rest.  The truth is, we were very good musicians and we knew it.  I can't speak for the rest of them, but it gave me my sense of worth.  Maybe not in the best way, but there were times when it was all I had to cling to.  The point is, where I came from, there was one superior way to do music and it was classical.  Pop was nauseating, rock was straight-up evil.  Oldies were sort-of tolerated because my dad (a teenager during the 60's) was still part of the family.  But mostly, anything that the symphony wouldn't play was "just noise."

BUT THEN

This jazz stuff that my sisters brought home was surprisingly not condemned.  My mom even willingly played it for us when we younger girls wanted to sing.  But we were still little classical robots and we held each other to it.  The college girls could sing however they wanted, but when they left, I felt too presumptuous to sing with any style.  What if somebody heard me?  Who was I to be taking liberties here or adding a trill there??  I had been trained from the age of two to PLAY AS WRITTEN.  It was alright for Ella Fitzgerald to put her soul into it, but not for little ol' me.  I was supposed to be a violin virtuoso, nothing more, nothing less.

In fairness, I need to interject here that musicals were always acceptable in my family, so most Broadway-stye stuff was ok and even encouraged.  But it was still to be sung as written, or just like in the movie, or whatever.

Well, years went by and my secret dream of being a jazz singer became less secret as one of my sisters got more into it too and started encouraging me.  She bought me a fakebook and played recordings for me.  I think it was her dream too.  I eventually started checking jazz CDs out from the library (this was pre-YouTube, folks) and took a jazz history class when I went to college.*  But I was always, always held back by the feeling that I just lived in a different sphere.  Singing jazz just wasn't on the plan.  My mom even said something once about me having my head in the clouds to think that I'd be happy just "singing in smoky bars" all the time.  That stung a little.  She clearly did not approve.  So I dropped it.

During my freshman year (at the University of Utah - Go Utes!), I met my man and we got married that summer.  Now here was a guy who loved music and could even sing and play guitar.  But... he liked punk, rock, Beatles, Ben Folds, all kinds of stuff.  He had been in a ska band - even played in "smoky bars" before!  He loved that I could play violin, but he wanted to hear me play "Come On Eileen," or "Istanbul" or whatever else was fun to play together.  You know, fun - the reason most people play music.  I dug out my fakebook and we started learning some songs.  I would figure out the crazy jazz chords and he'd try his best to play them on the guitar.  Then I'd sing.  We didn't do this very much, but I ADORED the feeling of it when we did.  But that's kind of all that happened.

When I was preggers with our first baby, we bought a restaurant.  A Bistro, in fact.  On Historic 25th Street in downtown Ogden.  Awesome, charming atmosphere in a century-old building with exposed brick and French artwork.  The PERFECT place to sing jazz on a Saturday night.  Now was my chance!  Since we owned the place, nobody could say no.  Nobody could reject me or say I didn't have the credentials or whatever.  But guys,

I NEVER DID IT!

My husband was more than supportive, I certainly could have pulled it off, but I was too chicken.  Maybe I was worried I'd be found out as an imposter!  Maybe I was worried my mom would find out, or my siblings.  Maybe I just didn't believe that I had permission to do something different than exactly what I was trained to do, in public.  BINGO.

Something important happened last spring (I think it was around then).  Devin's great-uncle Delmar passed away and after his funeral there was a luncheon at the Bistro.  <<Background Info: Delmar met and married his sweetheart while in the military in the... 40's?  Or even earlier?  Anyway, he wrote a bunch of love songs for his wife.  Super sweet.  But he'd never written them down and he wanted them transcribed before he died.  So he recorded himself singing them and I got the task of writing them out.  It was a little tricky to pick out the notes, between all the accidentals and his shaky voice, but I did the best I could, and here emerged these really sweet, really jazzy, kinda sappy songs.  I emailed them on and didn't really think about them again (except when they were stuck in my head from hearing them so many times).>>  So, back at the luncheon, there was a little program, including some of Delmar's songs.  Devin's uncle sang one reasonably well, considering he didn't really know it, but then my father-in-law stood up to sing another one, which was a lot more tricky.  He absolutely was not doing it justice.  I was standing by, thinking, 'This is the last time anyone will ever hear this song.  And I am the only person on the planet who knows what it's supposed to sound like.  I have to save it.'  I pictured Delmar watching from above and slapping his forehead in exasperation.  I was barely kin to him and had most definitely not been asked to sing at this shindig, but I still thought I owed it to Delmar, so I quickly gathered my courage, marched up to Nick, interrupted his singing in front of 50 or so people, and said "Nick, I love ya, but you're butchering this song."  Everybody laughed, he stepped aside, I said a few words about transcribing the songs and how sweet and simple Delmar's adoration for his wife was, and then I sang the song the way it was meant to be.

Oh, the horror!!  I sang a jazzy song jazzily, and without even being asked!  This went against everything I knew.  But I did it, and you know what?

EVERYBODY LOVED IT.

They really did.  They loved that I stopped Nick, they loved what I said and how I sang, they loved my voice.

This was a huge deal for me.  I just did it for Delmar's sake, but it showed me that [at least some] people liked the sound of my voice singing jazz.

Well, life went on and I forgot all about all this, until last week when I found out that the impending sale of our beloved Bistro would be taking place in a matter of days.  An announcement went up on Facebook and there was a huge response from heartbroken fans of the restaurant.  Devin and I were talking about all our mixed emotions when I said "It's too bad I never sang there."  He said "THAT really is a shame."  Then he said "Just do it!  Sing this weekend before we close!"  I hadn't even thought of that.  But I got excited about the idea, and then immediately the old familiar feelings set in and I didn't think I should/could/was good enough/whatever.  But Devin said get out of bed and get the fakebook and let's make a list.  So we did.  I was still unsure of it the next day (Thursday), but he started telling people I was going to sing.  Scared as I was, I really did want to do it, so I asked my sis-in-law Megan to play piano for me.  She agreed and we tentatively planned on Saturday night, our last night in business.  I proceeded to waffle about it for the next 36 hours, until Saturday morning when I realized I had nothing to wear.

I had 45 minutes from when Savers opened to get back home.  In the car I actually prayed that I'd find a dress.  A nice, flattering dress that would be cheap, modest and suitable for singing.  My frantic rifling through the dress racks was pretty discouraging.  But in the last section I found it.  A royal blue ethereal floor-length dress with a little beadwork, a flattering criss-cross bodice, and SLEEVES.  I couldn't believe it.  I dashed into the dressing room and it fit!  Not only did it fit, but it looked great on me!  The neckline was a little low, but pin-able.  The length would be perfect with heels.  The price?  $9.99.  Hallelujah!  I snapped a quick dressing-room photo, bought the dress and raced home just in time for Devin to leave.

Armed with a new dress I now felt more sure that I would actually sing that night.  I practiced all morning until my voice was hoarse.  I called Megan and coordinated about which songs we could do.  This was really happening!

My sister brought her family up for one last Bistro lunch and afterward helped me pin my dress and get it looking right.  They went home, the sitter showed up, we packed up the digital piano and headed down to the restaurant.

When the time came to actually sing, I was pretty much completely freaking out inside.  We started with a nice, simple song that I know really well, and trust me, I know how to count, but when it was time to come in I just couldn't do it.  Megan played a longer intro to try again, and then she still had to nod me in.  I was SO NERVOUS!!  Besides, my friend Amy had come to watch and showed up RIGHT before we started.  But there was nothing to do but sing.  So I sang.  That whole first song was a little shaky.  It was "As Time Goes By."  I didn't sing it quite how I wanted to, how I usually do in the comfort of my own home.  But at the end, people clapped and we did another song.

Before too long I relaxed into the singing and started to really enjoy it.  I did Summertime as a duet with Megan, she sang a few solos, and Devin played and sang a couple songs with me too.  It ended up being totally fun, totally my thing, and everyone I knew there (and some I didn't) said I sounded great.  I am absolutely not trying to brag here.  Just to show that all my fears were being crushed.  Not one person said "It sounds like you're trying to be something you're not," or "Tsk tsk, all that scooping!"  Now, not one person from my family was there either, so... ya know.  I purposely didn't tell them (except Lexye, who helped me with the dress and knows everything about me and still doesn't judge).  But people liked it and I loved it and I can't wait to do it again.  Now I just need a stand-up bass player.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got my start as a jazz singer.  Look out world!


*Just a little note here about how hard it used to be to pursue something.  Without every single thing you could ever want to know online, without the chance to "go viral" and get a following overnight with no connections, no money, no diploma, things just didn't seem as doable.  I think maybe my personality and my family culture played into that feeling as well, but I just want to make it clear that it wasn't as easy back then.

Just Do SOMETHING.

About a week ago, my friend shared a link on Facebook to this great little article called Perfection: the thief of good enough.  I haven't stopped thinking about it ever since.  Wanting so badly to "do it right" and ending up doing nothing instead is a phenomenon I am very familiar with.  It's more like a lifelong friend to me, actually.  Except it is NOT my friend.  Right.

Anyway, this is something I realized about myself years ago and have worked hard to combat, but for some reason this article made me see it from a different angle.  I'd always thought of this paralyzing perfectionism in terms of projects, but it reaches into so many more aspects of my life!  This is not just about not waiting until I can afford the perfect first-in-first-out self-rotating shelf system to organize my food storage.  It's taking just a 15-minute nap before the babies wake up so I can be a little nicer/more fun through dinner & bedtime.  It's still reading one book to Miles even if I don't have time to read the whole stack like he wants.  It's enjoying a low-key morning even if I don't get to laze around all day.  And really, it's life in general - still trying even though I'm imperfect.  But wait, there's more!  I can skip the Oreos although I already blew my diet.*  I can refrain from yelling at my naughty kids even if I've already been grouchy all day.  Any one step in the right direction counts, no matter how many steps you falter the other way.  For another great article about this specifically, check out my friend Janelle's blog here.

Woah, this is getting deep.  I didn't intend to get into all of that.  I intended to show you my kitchen window.  Oooh, here's another example - I failed to take a "before" picture, but I'm still posting the "after!"  Take that, perfection!

So, my awesome husband sprays our house for bugs every 6 months or so, and it makes SUCH a difference in the amount of unwelcome guests around here.  We used to pay someone to do it but Devin found the stuff at Home Depot and we've just saved that money ever since.  Yay!  I highly recommend spraying for bugs yourself.  But back to my window.  Devin sprayed for bugs about a month ago.  It was a little overdue.  And the time before that when he sprayed around my kitchen window (you know, the one I stand in front of for about 6 hours a day), the stuff dripped allllll down the window.  It looked terrible.  I didn't clean it up right away because I thought it should have a chance to dry and do it's bug-killing magic.  This was maybe a year ago.  But then I continued to not clean it up.  For months.  In the winter I started noticing how gross all my windows were and I wanted to have them cleaned professionally.  But I wasn't about to pay a bunch of money for clean windows that will only last until the next snowfall.  So I waited, and the windows stayed dirty.  I finally called someone in the spring.  I got a bid.  It seemed high.  'I should get another bid, see if someone will do it for less,' I thought.  So I waited, and the windows stayed dirty.  Especially that one in the kitchen.  Then it was time to spray for bugs again, and I certainly wasn't going to wash the kitchen window then.  It would just get dirty again!  So he sprayed again, a month ago like I said, and it dripped, and I didn't wash it, etc. etc.  'I should just wait until I find the right company to wash the outside of all the windows, and then I'll wash all the insides and it'll be great.'  That kitchen window that I look at so many times every single day continued to have sticky streaks all over - streaks that remind me of dead bugs.  Until today.  When I looked at that window for maybe the 17th time today, I thought about the article from the other day.  And I grabbed a rag.  I washed the inside and then, wouldn't you know it, I had the time & energy to wash the outside too.  So I popped out the screen, took my squeegee out there and just did it.  It was kinda fun, so I washed two more windows outside, including the huge one in our living room that regularly gets splattered with bird poop.

But I stopped there.  This house has something like 18 windows.  I just washed three of them, and only one on the inside.  But you know what?  I feel this enormous sense of accomplishment right now (not that enormous, I'm not delusional).  Actually, it's more of a feeling of satisfaction.  And I can't stop looking out my kitchen window.  I'm super happy with it and just wish I'd done it sooner.  It doesn't even bother me that there are lots of other windows in this house that are not clean right now.  I DID something and now I have a better view.  That is a step in the right direction, period.  I know someone reading this may be shocked that I let such a prominent window go unwashed for a year.  That is pretty bad, really.  But I have other priorities and cleaning is just not my strong suit.  That doesn't mean the dirty-for-a-year window didn't bother me.  It totally did, every time I looked at it!  But my perfection paralysis took over and I felt that I had to have time or money, or have it "together" to have a clean window.  So the good news is that if I want a clean window, I can just clean the dang thing.  Even if I don't clean it very well, it'll be an improvement.  This looked better even before I washed the outside.  And if I want to be healthier, I can exercise.  Even if I only do it once, it will do my body some good.  The best part is that when you do good, you feel good, and you want to do more good.  It's self-perpetuating.  I am NOT saying that you will only do good from that point on.  That is completely not the case.  But just taking action is the thing (dare I say the only thing?) that will lead to taking more action, and more importantly, to satisfaction.  Even with perfection nowhere in sight.

Just a note on what I see out the blessed kitchen window: this huge, shamefully unkempt tree/bush? that we've basically ignored for the last six years.  It's beautiful when it's in bloom, but it's gotten really out of control.  But I won't let it bother me, because we did some yard work on Saturday and took care of some long overgrown bushes and things and that's good enough for this week.  We could have just given up on our whole yard and waited until we could hire someone to come in and clean up the whole thing, but no, we'll just work on it a little at a time and eventually we'll get there - or maybe we won't, but we'll keep trying anyway.

I am committing to taking action, to just doing something.  One little step.  Most things need to be done one step at a time anyway.  And the bad things I do won't cancel out the good ones.  I won't be perfect, but I will keep making effort.

*When I say "diet," I mean a kinda sorta effort to lose weight and become stronger and more fit.  I set a ridiculous goal to lose 10 pounds this month, which is absolutely not happening.  But I have been a little more mindful of what I put in my body and I have been trying harder in the exercise department.  It all fits in perfectly with this subject, but this post is long enough!  More on that later?

It's all about the hair spray, baby!!

Fragging hair.  We all have to deal with it, one way or another.  I've never been great at it.  I blame my older sisters for always wanting to do it for me.  Oh, and it's never been like, my top priority, so I have yet to read a book or take a college course about it or anything.  However.  I have, like everyone else, spent some amount of time on my hair about every day of my life.  And I say, if you're going to spend time on something, you might as well feel good about the result.

So when you're pregnant, you have awesome hair, right?  It's a hormonal thing - the hair that would normally fall out doesn't while you're pregnant, so you end up with luscious locks.  And thank goodness, since you don't exactly look great in any other way.  Somebody threw us a bone there!  But after the baby's born and you don't have all that wonderful hair-retaining estrogen anymore, it all falls out.  At once.  It sucks!  This has happened to me, well, four times.  But this last time, I never recovered.  A year and a half later I still have super-thin hair that falls out a lot, as well as loads of little wispies growing in all around my hairline and the nape of my neck.  My search for a nutritional/hormonal answer is another story, but in the mean time, I still have to deal with my lame hair!

But now I get it.  I now know why some of my sisters always complained about having thin hair - a problem I never had before having babies.  Because when you don't have much hair to start with, it won't DO much.  And since looking at cool hairdos on Pinterest won't actually make more hair grow out of your head, and videos of "quick and easy" styles don't actually make the styles quick or easy to do, you end up feeling incompetent and ugly, and wondering if there might be some hair-doing gene that you just didn't inherit.

Well, none of this stopped me from trying.  I have had some success in the past with copying styles I see... but only the day after I hair-sprayed and flat-iron-curled my hair.  You know, it had body.  And when my hair was like that, I really could do a quick messy bun or... well, I'll be honest here, that's the only thing I've really been able to pull off.  Lay off me, I'm a beginner!  So I knew it was possible, but I thought that "texture" and "body" had to come from either curled or dirty hair, or both.  Or, from having been born with "hair that just works," which I clearly wasn't.  By the way, my hair has been a lot more oily since my last baby too, so the dirty option isn't great for me.*

So, having seen my hair actually do something before, I couldn't give up hope that it could do it again, and maybe, just maybe, without having to take 20+ minutes to curl it first.  Besides, after I've painstakingly curled all my hair, ain't no way I'm pulling it into some updo so just the curled ends can hang down.  I want credit for every bend!  But I just can't get my plain ol' hair to cooperate like it does with day-old curls.

Everything changed the other day when I watched a(nother) video on how to do some 2-minute top knot or something.  This one showed a professional stylist doing someone else's hair.  It was long.  It looked thick.  I soon decided the style wouldn't work on me.  But I watched anyway as the stylist sprayed the crap out of the hair before doing anything else.  Then she teased it.  And then she put it in a ponytail and sprayed and teased it some more.  By the time she was ready to do the actual style, the woman looked like she'd been struck by lightning.  There was just a head with a huge, puffy fuzzball on top.  Then she twisted it around or whatever and - tada! - of course it looked great.  The end.  But something had clicked for me.  I finally understood the key to all my problems.  When hair is sprayed and sticky and teased and messed up, it's BIGGER.  And when hair is bigger, either from having been curled and slept on, OR sprayed and teased 10 seconds ago, it cooperates.

This means that I have options!  I have tried this on my own sad, thin, depleted hair, even when it's squeaky-clean, and it works!  It stays where I put it!  It flows up and out instead of falling flat!  It gives me something to actually work with!  Incredible!  I may be the last person on earth to learn this universal truth, but hairspray is magic, folks.  And if you can tease your hair too, even better.  And while my hair is still not my top priority (by a long shot), it's something I have to live with, and knowing that there IS a way for even me to do my hair and like it, makes me feel like a real live grown-up.

Is my use of the phrase "grown-up" here a little telling of how far I still have to go?


*About six months ago, I actually had a human (not a video) show me how to use dry shampoo and I've got to say, it's great.  It really does help a lot.  So maybe the dirty hair thing is kind of doable after all.  But I don't think dirty necessarily equals workable.

Awesome Food-Storage Tacos! Yay!

Every time I make tacos, Devin says "We should have tacos once a week."  And he's right.  They're a crowd-pleaser, they incorporate some vegetables, and they can be as simple or as fancy as you like.

I grew up thinking tacos had to be made with ground beef, since that's the only kind my family ate - and they were still great.  Even now I sometimes sub-consciously think, 'Too bad we can't have tacos tonight.  No ground beef.'  But there are so many more options out there!  And with toppings, too - the possibilities are endless!

This is good news for me because 1) I don't really like ground beef that much, and 2) it's always so stinkin' expensive!  Most the time I just can't bring myself to pay $3.99/lb or whatever only to watch half of it melt into grease.  Besides, I don't really like touching the stuff and it just generally sort of grosses me out.

So.  More options.  Right.  I make some creamyish lime chicken tacos sometimes, and of course there's sweet pork ala Costa Vida, etc. etc.  But my new thing is making food storage tacos from canned roast beef.  I got the idea here.  Thanks, Crystal!  I haven't seen a ton of her stuff but it seems like a great food storage site.

Basically, 2 cans beef (with some or all of the broth) + 1 can green chiles (drained, so the kids don't moan about spiciness) + something for flavor (taco seasoning, dehydrated onion, cumin, whatever) in a pan for a bit and you're done.  I've been using beef from Costco, but I'd like to find a cheaper option.  I swear it used to be $10 for 4 cans and now it's $15!  And when I opened it up last night, it looked like this:

I admit that I had already drained some broth. But still!

I should have weighed it on my kitchen scale* right then to see if it really was 12 oz, but I just dumped it in the pan instead.  Oh well.  Next time!  Anyway, I love this stuff.  And it goes with any toppings you have around.  I think we'll officially start having Taco Tuesdays around here.  And with Pizza Movie Night on Fridays, and Devin's new suggestion to have hot dogs once a week (not sure I agree with that one though), that's a significant chunk of meal planning I won't have to do.


*This was a Mother's Day gift from Devin "to me" but really mostly for him.  He's been wanting one for a long time and I've been resistant to the idea because I figured it would win me over to measuring ingredients by weight and then I'd become a baking snob or something.  Well... ya.  It's happening.  Measuring by weight is magical!  And you dirty a lot fewer dishes!  I am kind of in love.  But I promise to keep in touch with my teaspoons-and-cups-and-close-enough roots.

Bits and Pieces

It can be frustrating learning about medical stuff.  Doctors rarely explain a lot about what they're doing or why they're recommending something, and of course they can't agree with each other, or even if they do agree, they're all going to change their minds next year.  I've learned that I have to be bold and ask ALL the questions and even if I'm obnoxious and/or they treat me like an idiot, I gain a lot more understanding that way.  I've learned that medical knowledge, like any other knowledge, comes in bits and pieces, with lots of trial and error in between.

Poor sweet Sam has pneumonia.  The process through which we arrived at that diagnosis was a little scary, although I felt pretty calm through it all.  He's home, he's getting better, and things are going to be fine.  He's taking cefdinir and azithromycin.  I also have a bottle of cefdinir sitting here for Eliza's ears, which I haven't given her yet.  Here's what I know now about antibiotics:

• OK, they really can be a good thing.
• Even people like me, who generally hate antibiotics, will turn to them when we really need an infection gone fast.
• They only kill bacteria, not viruses.
• The reason they always say to finish the course, even if you're feeling better already, is that if you don't, the bacteria may not be totally gone and may learn to fight off the antibiotic in the future.
• If you take probiotics along with an antibiotic, it helps it not kill ALL the good stuff.
• Some antibiotics have a shelf life (like cefdinir - 10 days), so if you choose not to give it right away, you may not be able to use it later.  This is (surprise!) what happened with Eliza.  I just didn't feel great about giving it to her, and then she started puking so I really didn't want to, and now that she's better & I'm giving it to Sam & feeling like it's fine to give to her too, it's too late.  It will go bad before she finishes the course, which could cause the problem listed above.  So it's better not to take it at all.  Luckily, she seems to be getting better and I can still use the leftover ear drops that I have.  I got all this info from the pharmacist.

I also learned some things about fevers, viruses and bacteria:

• Letting a fever run its course is generally a good idea, but in kids, there comes a point where the fever makes them not feel like eating or drinking, which causes further problems, so at that point it's better to control the fever.
• Fevers are not very effective against bacteria because bacteria can still grow in the heat.  A virus has a small temperature window where it can grow, so a fever is more effective against it.
• Bacteria start in one spot and grow out from there.  Viruses spread out all over the place and then grow everywhere they are.
• A virus (Sam had Rhinovirus) can cause a common cold, which will sometimes damage lungs and weaken them enough to where bacteria can take over - hence the bacterial pneumonia.  The pneumonia itself is not contagious, but whatever virus caused the damage in the first place is... or was.  By now, that virus is probably gone, or not catching anymore at least.  Viral pneumonia also exists but I don't really know anything about that for now.  You can tell by looking at Sam's x-ray that it's bacterial b/c it's in one spot and not all over.

And a couple things about x-rays:

• Air shows up black in an x-ray.  Even I could tell something was wrong in Sam's lungs because they didn't look the same.  But I was thinking, 'Yikes! What's all that black stuff?' when really the black was good and it was the cloudy, spider-webby white stuff that was the problem.
• Collar bones are like little twigs sticking out at weird angles, scared and alone in the middle of nowhere.  It's no wonder people break them all the time.

And just so it's down somewhere, here's what I already knew about fevers:

• A fever is your body's way of fighting something off with heat.  Fuel the fire by eating and drinking lots of fluids to help it burn up the attacker.
• However, when a fever gets too high, it can start to damage your body (including your brain - scary!) so you need to watch it and bring it down if it gets high.
• Scary high for kids: 105
• Scary high for adults: 103/104
• Kids can go higher without as much concern because their bodies are smaller and their temp can swing back and forth more quickly.  By the time an adult reaches 103/104, their big body has some serious momentum and things can get really out of control.
• Peppermint essential oil is the fastest fever-reducer I've ever used, and won't give any side effects like tylenol or ibuprofen.
• If you do go the tylenol/ibuprofen route, you can alternate them & take one every four hours.  But only take/give it if you need to.