On hearing that Google had developed an AI that could detect lung cancer in CTs, the 12YO pointed out it would also be cool if you could take pictures of weird stuff on your skin and have your phone tell you if you needed to see a doctor for it. And then she started to imagine what it would be like to use it. Commence role play in 3.. 2.. 1..
I don’t know about you, but I have a terrible time convincing anyone in my family to wear bug spray. It just smells so bad. Sadly, that stink is why bug spray works.
My sister and I have been talking about medical things more than usual lately, and since she also inherited our family’s wildly roving mind, somehow we got on to the topic of leeches, and whether this medieval practice was still popping up in modern medicine.
My father has been having a few health issues lately, which have resulted in my flying down to Texas a couple of times to help out with this and that. My daughter, being the curious and caring sort, has had all sorts of questions about what’s going on with Grandpa. Respecting both my father’s need for privacy and my daughter’s desire for answers has been challenging at times. On my last trip, I accidentally hit upon a good solution. I thought I’d share it with you in case you also wanted to try it.
This morning when I came downstairs for my necessary cup of coffee, I spied a bedraggled brown lump floating on the surface of the swimming pool. On closer inspection, it proved to be a dead mouse. Which brings us to today’s question: “There’s a dead mouse in the pool. Is it time to freak out?”
Thinking about composting your potentially E.coli infected romaine? Do me a favor. Don’t. At least not this time around. Here’s why.
Earlier this year, The Ten-Year-Old’s fifth grade class spent 18 hours learning what it meant to be sailors in 1906 as part of the Age of Sails program at the San Francisco Maritime National Park. Ever since then, she’s been reading everything she can get her hands on about life on the sea between the mid-1800s and early 1900s. After learning that the entire crew of the Franklin Expedition of 1845 died in one of that century’s greatest tragedies, the Ten-Year-Old naturally wanted to know why.
One afternoon after a rough day at school, The Ten-Year-Old tried to calm herself down by picking Canelo up for a hug. He was having none of it. The Ten-Year-Old was disappointed when Canelo ran off instead of giving her the reassuring head-bonk she was looking for, but as always, her curiosity won out. “Mommyo, can cats smell stress?”
How did grapefruit get their name? Why do cats have three eyelids? And why are they called wisdom teeth anyway? Today I answer multiple questions briefly in the hopes of clearing the decks a bit before summer.
After reading The Night Before Christmas, The (then) Five-Year-Old and I had a conversation about the perils of smoking, and whether Santa smoked. The (then) Five-Year-Old has obviously been busy processing this information because a few days later she asked me, “Why doesn’t Santa have heart disease?”
CATERPICKLES 