Update with wheels, ellipses, and cheerio cakes

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville.  I myself continue to have back-and-forth run-ins with the ringing/hissing app that seems to be installed in my cerebellum.  I'm not sure what more to say about that -- sometimes there'll be an hour or two where it subsides so much I think, "I'm cured!", but it keeps coming back, especially at home, and so I'm doing my best to learn to deal with it, both finding physical ways to minimize the ringing, but also mental ways to redirect my attention.

And just to remind me that things could be worse . . . for poor Xavier in Haiti, things do seem to keep getting worse.  A few months ago, the armed gangs running through the streets had broken the motor bike we'd bought him.   We sent him a bit of money for food and to fix the bike.  I never know, when we send money to Haiti if it's actually going to the intended purposes, but I'm willing to be a bit wrong now and again if I end up with the chance to do more good than harm in the long run.  At any rate, it appears the bike did indeed get fixed, . . . but then earlier this week we got an update from Xavier just saying "Mom", with a bunch of person-in-head-bandage emojis.  And then when I asked what was happening, he said, "I accidented.  I made an accident."

So, the bike seems to be beyond repair.  We're hoping Xavier himself isn't beyond repair; he's in a hospital, in serious pain, and is going to have surgery on his foot next week, with hopes that he doesn't end up losing it.  This poor young man!

How to segue out of that?  The majority of my days are actually much more pleasant than those two first updates indicate.   My calendar looks strangely empty:  I have a bunch of exercise dates in the early mornings, a bit of my weekly volunteering at the local soup kitchen,  one zoom meeting with a TIAA representative, and two different evening events, but the middles of my days are big swaths of white space.

And what do I do with that white space?  I've been having a lot of fun working on a mathematics paper; it helps with my sanity as I try to fall asleep at night, and it gives me a reason to go talk to other friends on campus, and it's an excuse to come up with cool beautiful pictures.  Here's one of those pictures:

Coming up with this image involved not only figuring out some of the geometry of perspective and interactions of ellipses, but also figuring out how to code a bunch of partitions in a graphics language called Tikz.  (For those who care, it involves several \begin{scope}--\end{scope} sections that are clipped differently.)

My guy has been getting more involved in helping the folks involved in fundraising for Ukraine relief.  He was added to a text message list, and started getting all sorts of texts in Russian . . . that was funny!  (Especially because they weren't so much about strategy or Ukraine tactics as about dietary preferences "I'm a vegan, but my husband is not a vegetarian." etc.)

Prewash is enjoying the summer weather, and especially enjoying the occasional chances she gets to come into the office with me.  She's been with us for a while now; she's turning 7 sometime this summer.  We're not sure exactly when her true birthday is, so for the heck of it I declared this past June 2 to be the day we should celebrate.   And what a lovely celebration it was!  We had a dozen people over for a "No Hands Dinner".  This included several of my offspring, all my grandkids, and also a former student who had lived in our house for a while, together with his wife and 5-year-old twins.  We had a blast!

The kids made terrible faces when I told them that I'd decorated the chocolate cake with dog treats, but then I explained that  the treats we give the dog are cheerios. I'm sure it'll come as no surprise to you that eating chocolate cake with no hands is very, very, delightfully messy.  

Voila the cake!

(One grandchild, the 3-year-old, did the opposite of No Hands for her cake; she took to rubbing the cake with her fingers and then stuffing both hands in her mouth.  She reminded me of the bears in Narnia, who embarrassed the other creatures by sucking on their paws instead of looking fierce).  And Prewash loved living up to her name, by helping cheerfully with cleanup! It was a delightful evening.

And that's the latest news from our family.  May you and yours stay safe.