My bank debit card was compromised over the weekend somehow between 7/15 and 7/16.
Within 24 hours, 8 online transactions of $25 each were “approved” on my card. The Visa Fraud Prevention bureau called me yesterday afternoon and told me what was going on. A couple of hours earlier they put a “watch” on my account, and by mid-afternoon they had cancelled my bank card completely. The transactions were for three companies: Yahoo Wallet, Yahoo Voice, and Moneybookers (which is a company billing out of London). I’ve never heard of these before, so it was really easy to confirm that I didn’t make these charges.

The lady on the phone was sympathetic, took me at my word, told me what to do, and apologized for the inconvenience. This morning, I called my bank and in less than 5 minutes was reassured that none of those charges will hit my account, was issued a new bank card that will arrive in 3-5 business days, and I “pre-PINned” my new card over the phone.

This is such an unbelievably far cry from my last horrific identity theft experience of 1994-1995, I’m practically giddy. During those 10 months I argued, demanded, pleaded, and swore to heaven and back that the charges weren’t mine, they were fraud. I signed and had notorized countless affidavits. I wrote hundreds of letters. I made hundreds of calls. I was repeatedly accused of lying. The total bill: $70,000.00. I never had to pay for any of it in the end.

I guess the business world is a lot more savvy now. I’m happy that the problem all seems to be wrapped up before it really even got going.

Nevertheless, I’ll be watching my bank account like a hawk for the next week or so.

Lucas has become rather fascinated with space, astronaughts, robots, etc. He sometimes plays Lost In Space with his friends, which doubtless has nothing at all to do with the old TV series or the movie that was made a while back, since none of them has ever seen these shows. I think they know there’s a robot in it.

We’ve checked out from the library books on rockets and the space shuttle. Lucas knows who Alan B. Shepard is (first American to journey into space, May 5, 1961). He knows about solid-fuel rockets and liquid-fuel rockets (and so, coincidentally, do I).

His interest in space is also reflected heavily in his artwork, which now features astronaughts floating in space and air tubes hooked up to life-support systems. The sun, planets, stars, and fireworks light up the skies of his pictures. Big machines called “astronaught maker-floaters” also appear; they have many tubes.

Last Tuesday, in the car, Lucas explained some stuff about the universe I didn’t already know.

“The farthest-out planet in the solar system is Pluto,” he said. “Then, the one after that is Jail.”
“What’s Jail?” I asked.
“That’s where the police take the bad guys.”
“It’s a planet in space?” I asked.
“Yeah. They take the bad guys to Jail in a rocket ship. You know what’s past Jail?” Lucas queried.
“No, what?”
“Heaven.”
“What’s Heaven?”
“It’s where the fairies live,” he said.

Hmm… 9:38 am on Saturday morning. We slept in and ate a yummy breakfast. Now I have to decide whether to clean my house—which is a nightmare—work, or take my boys to Fairytale Town. Easy choice.

I finished my article yesterday morning, and Lucas and I had a picnic at the schoolyard near our house. Then we spent the afternoon at B’s house playing with Ella and Henry. We swam and snacked and generally enjoyed ourselves in the sun for several hours.

Ian came home and cooked us a steak dinner with carmelized onions, “cob-on-the-corn,” and spinach salad. Then, a necessary trip to the store for more pull-ups resulted in a stop at Baskin-Robins for ice cream. My adventuresome 4-year-old chose lemon custard.

Ian discovered we can take 4 private ballroom dance lessons at Aurthur Murray Dance Studio on Manzanita for … $360!!! Yeah, right. Kiss my twinkle-toes, Aurthur Murray!

My in-laws are back from their 4-week road trip in Oregon, Washington, and Canada. I expect we’ll have to visit them this weekend sometime. I’m glad they’re back because now Ian won’t have to go to their house every other day and water everything on their 1-acre lot by hand.

Speaking of watering, my parents’ lawn is dying. Theirs is an automatic sprinkler system, so I don’t know why this is happening or where the malfunction is. I do know I feel guilty about the brown spots in the lawn. So I’ll go over there and set up a manual sprinkler in the hopes that I can reverse the damage in the next week before mom and dad come home.

All this effort spent keeping up our parents’ houses has resulted in a total lack of attention for our own yard. Austin, the lawn-mowing teen, has disappeared without a trace. I don’t care how much d–e he smokes, as long as he comes twice a month to mow my lawns! My Japanese maple in the back yard is looking quite singed. I need to get a taller tree planted to give it some shade. The weeds are high. I just can’t face yard work when it’s hot.

Lucas is now back at Hidden Treasure preschool after a two-week break. Thanks to Parnasus and Bella, he was able to spend the intervening days at Ring-A-Rosies with T and X. (Thank you!) He’ll get to go there on Mondays for the rest of the summer too.

Today I have to finish and turn in an article on several nutrition topics. I’m at that stage where I have a draft that is mediocre. With some judicious, yet merciless, hack-and-slash editing, it will probably end up being pretty good. Usually editing isn’t a problem for me (for obvious reasons), but editing my own writing is painful.

I had better get to it. I don’t have any childcare today and Lucas is playing by himself at the moment. Let the amputation begin.

P.S. If anyone cares to look for it, I have an article published in the July issue of Sacramento magazine. It’s near the end in a special Medical Guide section (p 30) and it’s called “Easy Does It.” It’s about gentle exercise with a focus on yoga, tai chi, Pilates, and aquatic exercise.

Mom and Dad are having a great time down under. They enjoyed New Zealand very much, although it’s very cold there (being winter and all). My dad bought gloves and a hat! That is crazy weird because he NEVER gets cold in California. Dad also bagged his red stag. I’m kind of sad about this, but whatmigonnado? Apparently, the red stag territory where he went hunting is where the Lord of the Rings placed the lands of Rohan—the city that Theoden ruled and Eowyn lived—can’t remember the name. He also tromped through the area where the wargs attacked the carravan of people fleeing to the fortress—can’t remember that name either. Dad is flabbergasted by the LotR fans who come on pilgrimmage to see the NZ sites where the movies were filmed. Mom and Dad both said NZ is just gorgeous. Now they are in Sydney, Australia for a final week. I’m glad they’re having fun.

Our little gathering on the 4th of July was fun. It was very quiet at first but picked up speed at around dusk. I got to spend time with Kimkim and Foresto, which is something I haven’t done in a looooong time. Thaemos brought a pinata with 5 pounds of candy for 5 small children! Lucas is very proud of himself for knocking the leg off. Thanks for coming everyone. I hope you enjoyed it, even though the pool was a little chilly.

We Wilsons are going to my parents’ house in F.O. tomorrow to swim and BBQ, probably starting around 1 pm. Friends are welcome to join us there. (I even have parental permission!) Think low-key, low org, and potluck food. We are broke, so we will not really be able to provide refreshments beyond some chips and salsa. Bring a suit if you want, and a towell, and food and beverages. Bring pool toys.

The only thing is, I don’t want to do fireworks there (open, dry field near my parents’ house), so if fireworks (or booming noises) on the 4th are your passion, you might prefer to do something else with our blessing.

When it’s dark, we will probably return to our neighborhood to sit in folding chairs in the school field at the end of our street. We’ll take our light toys and watch the sky fireworks they’ll be shooting from Del Campo High a few neighborhoods over to the west. Again, low-key, low org.

If you’d like more information or directions, please call. Everyone reading this has my phone number.

Ian left this morning at stupid 6 am to catch a train. He’ll be in Fresno for two days and a night. It’s been … 16 months since we slept apart. I’m a little sad. Lucas woke up crying for daddy this morning. “I want my daddy. I want my daddy to be home with me.”

My parents are out of the country for three weeks. Ian’s parents are out of the state for three weeks. Needless to say, we have raided the freezers and pantries of both houses. That’s what they get for leaving us wayward kids to fend for ourselves while they go galavanting around the world.

This past weekend was quite wonderful. I got to go to three parties! Two were birthday parties: one for Cindy and one for Kelly. We finally got to see Kelly’s new home, which is very cute, and contributed to her housewarming fruit tree fund. We also got to meet Ambrosia’s daddy, Sutrisno, who is from Suriname. And I tried Nia dancing for the first time and it rocked! I’ve been meaning to make it to Kelly’s Nia classes for ages now, but I really want to go now.

And on Sunday I got to see bunches of friends at FCL and Grl_Fury’s house. It was so totally awesome. I hadn’t seen anyone in sooooooo long.

Ian completed a course for National University this weekend and has enjoyed about two days of no studying (or maybe he studied at work but not at home in the evening). That’s two down now and probably 10 or 11 courses to go. Plus all the work he’s doing through University of North Texas for his BCBA certification. Poor guy is stretched really thin these days. In the last two days, I’ve seen him smiling more than I have in the last two weeks. Stress sucks.

Lucas’s antics are still very exciting. He ran right out into the street the other day without looking to see if any cars were coming. At the party on Sunday evening, he chose to go into the pool alone, even though we told him no more swimming. He just ignored us, walked off the step, and promptly sank. We had loooonnng talks about both of these incidents. What’s funny/weird is that if I give Lucas a warning that explains why something is dangerous (for example, “…because you could get hit by a car and be badly hurt and that would be terrible”), he interprets this explanation as a sort of curse and cries and yells at me for saying mean things to him—as though by saying it, I am trying to hurt him in that way.

Lucas is enjoying going to school at the B’s, and despite the fact that it’s pretty crazy for a kid to have two preschools, he seems pretty excited about going to both Hidden Treasure and Ring-A-Rosies this summer because he’ll get to see almost all of his friends every week. And I’ll get enough childcare to earn a living … hopefully.

And that’s the news from Wilsonia.

I have a lot of daylilies in my garden. They show up in bursts of big, gorgeous blooms on tall stalks from May through August. I have peach, red, yellow, and an orange-red color; they are a riot. Each flower only lasts about a day before it withers up. That’s never a problem because each plant pumps out dozens of blooms all the time. Until last week, I had never actually cut one and put it in a vase. I had assumed that they would be terrible cut flowers (unlike asiatic lilies, which are great cut flowers). I discovered that the daylilies last 1-2 days in water before drying up. And much to my amazement, the unopened buds on the cut stem actually open up into beautiful big flowers too!

This discovery is almost as wonderful as the fact that tulips move and grow toward the light after they’ve been cut and placed in a vase.