Musings at Altitude

Late last night my 14 year old came into our room and asked if we could go out to breakfast this morning.  My 23 year old very pregnant daughter had a doctor’s appointment this morning and didn’t want to go, and my wife was going with 23 year old to her appointment so she didn’t want to get up early and go either.  So I made my 14 year old beg a little bit and suffer with the thought of not going a little bit before I gave the inevitable, “Ok, I’ll take you”.

You need to know several things about my 14 year old:

(1) she has no problem waking up in the morning, and she’s as bouncy and perky in the morning as she is at any other time of the day all the way up to bed time

(2) she never is at a loss for words, so any adventure that includes the 14 year old also requires an enormous amount of attention or you can most certainly count on hearing the same conversation again when you will pay attention

(3) she always includes certain subjects in every single conversation – hockey and the latest news about the Avalanche; fashion and how her purse so perfectly matches her clothes and so efficiently carries all of her needed assundries; and summer plans and how I still need to make her reservations to complete her summer objectives by sending her back east to visit her friends that we left behind when we moved back to Colorado

So last night we agreed to leave the house at 7:00 am, and this morning at 6:50 am she was completely ready and tapping at the door wanting to make sure I was ready and wanting to ensure we left on time.  That’s another thing about my 14 year old – plans are plans and schedules are meant to be kept.  We left the house about 7:03 am, so I was already the target of her comments and criticism because I had said we would leave at 7:00 am and it was already 7:03.  As we got in the car, her choice was IHOP and her quest was cheesecake pancakes.  As expected, we talked about the first two of the in-every-conversation topics in route to IHOP, and we covered the third at the table.  One of the most amazing things to me about my 14 year old is how the conversation just flows – constantly – and so randomly – with no real purpose but so much intensity and so consistently on message and on topic (even though very random in sequence). 

As she talked, we ordered, and as always, she stunned me with her food selection:

My 14 year old is incredibly petite – a size 0 I believe – maybe a size 2 in pants right now, but when she sits down to eat, she’s anything but petite.  So as I watched her petitely pack down this mega meal from IHOP, she continued on her discussion thread and covered even more topics certainly relevant to her but not very memorable to me.  I was fortunately distracted as I packed down my healthy omelet that was only a fraction of the size of her not-nearly-as-healthy meal, and when I looked up just a few minutes later I saw this:

 

You can see from this picture how petite my daughter is with the plate actually wider and rounder than she is.  And you can also see that she packed away some food while she continued with her constant dialogue on life and her issues.  My guess is that she put down about 1200 calories and pushed out about 2400 words in a 15 minute period.  That’s about 2 words out for every calorie in.  Since I was on receive mode most of the time and eating healthy, my meal was probably about 600 calories and I pushed out about 200 words.  That gave me 1 word out for every 3 calories in. 

Now I don’t know what all this means, but she packs in 1200 calories and stays petite and I pack in 600 calories and look quite hefty.  I can only assume with the limited data that I have that it has something to do with the quantity of words and the animation in delivery.  She obviously has the clue that hands should fly, the body should be constantly shifting and moving, and the flow of words should be almost unrecognizable in order to achieve maximum burn and thus maintain that petite status.

Anyway, as always, the time spent with my 14 year old was both enlightening and rewarding.  I’m now up to speed on all things related to hockey again and I’m almost hip in understanding the fashion trends of the day.  I’m also aware of my ongoing “to do list” as she reminded me that I have to get her reservations for her summer trip which will be one of her last two summer objectives that she must achieve.

What a great way to start the day…all is now at peace though I’m the only one that left with a follow up item!