Getting to Know You

Carrie at Reading to Know is doing a "Getting to Know You" post, and although she probably already knows more about me than she wants to (including my incredible talents at exploding hard-boiled eggs), I thought I would participate since it's also my birthday and therefore I should spend some time talking about myself. 

1. Do you attend church and, if so, what denomination are you a part of?


We attend an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America congregation. I never saw myself as part of the mainline, but this particular church, anyway, is one that is all about Jesus giving his life for ours and being ready to share that. (And not about us showing everyone how great we are, or measuring up to somebody's standard, or trying to take over the world politically, or what not.) Ours is a rural congregation that may be a bit more conservative than the denomination at large; there are some social issues that just don't get talked about.

There are some kids besides ours and the people who don't have young kids are universally accepting of kids as kids and let them be part of the life of the church, not sequestered off. There's room for people who are struggling with doubts or don't have it all together. And it's liturgical (in a relaxed way with a variety of music) and I find I have a raw need for that; for hearing, every week, "God, in Christ, forgives you all your sins," and "The body of Christ, broken for you."

2. Do you home school/use the public system or enroll your kids in private school? Any particular reason why?
We homeschool. Why? People have been asking that lately. Life has been very stressful and the question comes up, "Wouldn't it be easier to put them in school?"

Well, no, I don't think so. I could be wrong. But I would have to drag them all out of bed on time and have them dressed (in clothes that weren't their favorite worn-to-rags-and-stained) and find shoes and get them on and then the twins are too young for school so either I would still be stuck at home all day with preschoolers (which is a fate I would do almost anything to avoid experiencing again) or we would have to pay to put them in preschool and I'd have to get them there, too. And Deux would HATE school. (Deux hates switching gears to go places he loves, and I can't imagine that he would love a noisy classroom with 25 other 6 and 7-year-olds, where his inability to pay attention to thoughts outside his head would become acutely problematic and his ability to work out negative numbers and division by fractions would be completely overlooked.) And then I would have to pick them up again and they'd be tired and cranky and I'd have to make them do homework (much of which I would probably find boring and a waste of time) and help them with fundraisers and stuff.

The truth is, I'm a better tutor than a mother, and the thought of giving up the only part of motherhood that I have some comfort and talent with is not appealing to me.


3. How long have you been married? How many kids do you have, or want to have? Have you ever thought of adopting, or have you? 
DOB and I have been married nine years. We have four kids. Four is a good number. I think the topic of adoption came up once, three weeks after we were married and two weeks before we discovered the Duchess was on the way. Ever since, we have more than had our hands full with our biological offspring, so we have never seriously considered messing up somebody else's kids.

4. What is your greatest personality strength? Weakest?
 Ha! I picked this one out and I am drawing a blank.

Probably my curiosity. I am interested in pretty much everything. (Well, except for things that interest normal people, like sports or shopping or dogs.) Nothing energizes me like something new to think about, find out about, or try out.

By the same token, my greatest weakness is probably that I quickly overload and then I freeze.  Which is why I spent forty-five minutes in the back of Fred Meyer on Saturday looking for the electronics section, somehow having missed on my previous 167 visits to the store that the electronics section was Right Out Front next to the checkout. Yeah. Shopping is not a good thing for me. Too many options.

5. What do you like best about your family?
I like that we are all completely, bizarrely, weirdly imaginative. Everything is a story. Something too strange to even reduce to writing is usually going on in the living room: drawings of evil mermaids, battles between plants and zombie ninjas, school with pirates. Meanwhile the grownups are reading or writing fantasy or sci-fi or developing their GURPS characters.

6. What is your favorite thing about where you live (country, neighborhood, etc.)? Least? Favorite? I don't know. I love water. I love mountains. I love lots and lots of trees. I even love rain. I like our little town that's close to the big city but not too close.

One thing I don't love is the lack of sidewalks close to our house. It's very hard to walk in the dark, and this time of year, dark is the only time I have to walk.

7.  What is your idea of the perfect day?
No schedule. Nowhere to go. The fridge already stocked with food. A very long walk in the woods. A stack of books to read. Some games. Nobody crying or needing wiped.

This is a picture of me doing something usual--trying to take care of both the twins at once and dropping things. The only thing not usual is that my hair is looking unusually restrained.

The Christmas Spirit

Once upon a time I always, always spent the day after Thanksgiving playing Christmas music, deep-cleaning the house and dragging out the Christmas decorations. When my parents and other braver souls returned from the sales, if I was doing well, I could be ready to put up the tree.

Now I think the best way to spend the day after Thanksgiving is sleeping in. Probably the day after that, too. I will never go to the sales, not unless they do not involve other people, noise, movement, and lights. The Christmas decorations will be up eventually, and the house won't be clean for five minutes together no matter what I do. I may dig out Christmas music, but I still haven't figured out where I keep it.

Instead, I offer for your pre-Advent reading pleasure a very short story I wrote last year.

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The Christmas Spirit

Emily stirred a third spoonful of honey into her peppermint tea. Gran raised an eyebrow and passed the plate of cookies again.

“Now, Emily, I sent for you for three reasons. First, although I haven’t told anyone yet, particularly your mother, the doctor says I’m about to keel over at any moment. I haven’t got much time, so pay attention. Second, you’re old enough to stick to your guns and young enough to be excused eccentricity. Third, you may, just possibly, take me seriously.”

Emily tried to drink the tea and burnt her tongue again. She set the cup down and watched for a moment to see if Gran would drop dead. When she didn’t, Emily asked, “Seriously about what?”

“I’m going to teach you how to have a proper Christmas. We’ll have to work out distances and angles so you can recreate it in a different house, as your father will undoubtedly sell this place the second I croak. If you do all the work, you’re more likely to remember when you have to do the ritual yourself.”

“Ritual? What do you mean, ritual?”

“The Christmas ritual, dearie. Did you think the Christmas spirit was just a metaphor? Or that it happened by magic? Well, it does happen by magic, that’s the point, but magic is hard work, dearie, and don’t you forget it. Now go get the red box second from the left on the right side of the attic.”

Emily stuffed the cookie in her mouth and did as she was told. When Gran called you “dearie,” the business end of her cane was not likely to be far behind.

It took the better part of the next two hours to get the box fully unpacked, each item correctly positioned, and for Gran to explain the significance and history of each tinsel-wrapped angel and tacky crocheted snowman. Much was revealed.

“So that’s why the fruitcake! I wondered why we always have it even though no one ever eats it.”

“Spirits don’t have tastebuds. But they do like tradition. It makes particularly good compost, later.”

At last they sat down in the middle of the arrangement and Emily tried the tea again. It was ice cold now, and disgustingly sweet.

“How did you learn all this, Gran?” she finally dared to ask.

“That, I’m not telling. Some stories are not fit for young girls. Suffice it to say you are very lucky to learn all this in a cozy afternoon with your Gran.” She winked, a little maliciously.

“Now for the incantation,” Gran said, “Listen closely, it’s not hard, but it can’t be repeated more than once a year.” She began to chant. Emily listened. It sounded a bit like a Christmas carol, only with the words a bit off, but she couldn’t be sure because Gran couldn’t carry a tune.

By the end of the chant Gran’s singing was as smooth as her Rosemary Clooney records, and an inexplicable glow had driven back the gloom of the winter afternoon. Emily tasted her tea again: it was perfectly warm, and just sweet enough. The room sat in golden quiet for a moment.

“Gran?”

“Mmmhmm?”

“What if you didn’t summon the Christmas Spirit?”

“Well, it might show up uninvited. You don’t want that. Spirits can be pretty nasty when they feel snubbed. But at best you’d be without it, and then what would happen? Uncle Al would get drunk and smash half the glasses, your mother would lecture everyone on everything, and your Treadwell cousins would never lift their eyes from their computer thingies. Vanessa’s boyfriend would be scared off for good and she’ll never get another chance, poor girl.”

“So that’s why you do it all the same every year.”

“Pretty much, pretty much.”

Emily drank her perfect tea and then ventured one more question. “Is the Santa toilet lid cover part of the ritual?”

Grandma chuckled. “No, that’s just to annoy your Aunt Vicky. She hates that kind of thing, but thanks to the Spirit she can’t do a thing about it.” Grandma sighed, closed her eyes, and then suddenly slumped in her chair.

Emily rose and shrieked, just a little. Grandma opened one eye and grinned.

“Fooled you, didn’t I? Well, I’m not dead yet. Now, you’re too young and I’m too old to worry about calories, so what say we have another round of cookies?”

Growth Spurts

Once upon a time, I could pretty much count on having leftovers enough for lunch. I cooked the pot or pan full, and there they were--leftovers. Security blanket for cooks.

Now I usually have to set some aside to scrounge a lunch for DOB. Even the cooked vegetables go faster than they used to go. (Of course, that is partially because I have been studying how to cook them better. Try melting a couple of tablespoons of butter in a pan, then tossing in cauliflower florets, minced garlic, and bread crumbs and baking until tender at 375. The kids were eating it like popcorn. Next time I'll have to make two heads.)

They keep growing, yes they do. Two weeks ago Dash's drawings were elaborate squiggles that only he could decipher and he had no interest in the alphabet other than the first letter of his name. This week they suddenly became clear representations: people, boats, houses. He fills pages of them. He wants to write letters and rejoice in their sounds. He wants to write his name, all seven letters of it. Which has interested Dot in writing her whole name, not just her two-letters-repeated nickname.

Deux, who a few weeks ago was protesting that he did not like reading and refused to pick up much besides comic books, was glued to The Horse and His Boy yesterday. Duchess insisted she had already read all the books on our shelves, but conceded that she hadn't finished the Anne books so maybe she will go there next.

I like it. Except for the lack of leftovers. Maybe I should get bigger pans.

In Which I Rant About Something That Is Probably Nothing

Deux found a very cute little graphic novel about a robot at the library today and I let him bring it home. I prelooked it (there were no actual words involved) and I doubt anything in it will damage him. But it still bugged me.

The story line is that this dog makes a robot from a kit and they are best buds and do fun things together and then the robot goes swimming and gets too rusted up to go home from the beach. After a while the dog gets a book on robot repair and tries to go back to the beach and rescue the robot, but it's closed for the season. So he goes home and tries to play with other things and finally gets a new robot kit. Meanwhile the robot daydreams of being rescued and gets scavenged for parts and finally hauled off for scraps. There his few remaining parts are found by a raccoon, who turns him back into a cool radio robot. In the final scenes, the radio robot sees his original dog friend walking by with his new robot, and he turns on the radio and plays them a tune as they pass.

Message, as far as I can tell: Relationships are fleeting. Enjoy but move on.

Maybe it's silly. I mean, nobody says a robot gets a till-death-do-us-part vow. But surely even a robot deserves a little more perseverance. Fight for your friend, little dog! Climb the fence! Borrow a boat! Don't just walk away and find someone new!

Then again, maybe it's not so silly. How can we raise children to be loyal and faithful, to be capable of permanent relationships, without holding it up to them as an ideal when they are too young to be cynical and jaded? So much of modern's children books seem to be an effort to prepare children for life by lowering their expectations; by smashing idols that have never had time to be built.

Maybe I'll just make sure he checks out Horton Hatches An Egg next week.

Things That Are Awesome

Our library. I hear a lot of griping about libraries being turned into strictly realms of multimedia and series books about digestive difficulties, but ours is still awesome. They have the entire Wizard of Oz series in hardcover reprints. They have the Melendys and the Moffats and Freddy the Pig and Tintin and Asterix. When I request a weird, obscure book they usually go right out and buy it. (Like The Servile State by Hillaire Belloc and On Growth and Form by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Not that I have actually finished either yet. But now I can.)

Their multimedia isn't shabby either, with lots of retired TV shows (DOB and I never start watching anything until it's had its final season) and old movies and new movies and audio CDs of all kinds of classic children's books.

And they have cool programs (like the one demonstrating the difference between stage and real combat) and cozy chairs and toys in the children's section and a view of the bay and mermaids and pirate ships on the walls of the bathrooms.

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The children's doctor and everybody else in the office. We know all too well how many doctors there are who don't talk; or who don't listen; or who can't tell anything without several hundreds' of dollars worth of tests and then stare blankly at you. The children's pediatrician is none of these. He listens, he respects the knowledge, instincts and decisions of parents, he does a thorough hands-on check and knows what he is looking for. When Dash needed an IV, he came over to check on him multiple times. He has a great sense of humor and the kids love him (when they're well, which is usually the only time we see him). He makes great book and movie recommendations and wants us to study Latin. His nurse is wonderful, too, and the nurses on the needle-poking side of the building and even the people at the pharmacy down the hall all bent over backwards to get a sick little boy home as soon as they could.

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Role-playing games. Where have they been all my life? (Categorized as demonic, that's where.) It's somewhere in between playing for grownups and novel writing for undisciplined people. DOB, Bookworm, Rocketboy and I have just about finished a trial Dungeons and Dragons campaign and are going to try GURPS next. (Something with camels--I think my character will be the daughter of a ruined merchant). I admit, I find combat a bit tedious and keep falling asleep, but I think that will get better as we have more of it figured out.

I noticed that on a list of things to have done in a lifetime that I posted on the blog a very long time ago "Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight" was listed. I still haven't done that, but I think 4 hours should count when you have small children. And always start falling asleep at ten o'clock.

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Pumpkin pie, if you add molasses.

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A quiet rainy Sunday afternoon with a stack of books and a laptop.

Statements by Dot

"I wish there was a thing called a tornado so that I could see what it was. Even though it is horrible."

"That terrible pain is coming to my stomach again, which means that I am getting hungry."

Late As Usual

It is the time of year when the Great Halloween Debate is over, which means it's time for me to post on it.

I refrained myself from the Snarky Homeschool Forum Post when a lady said, "I just don't know how to explain to my four year old that dressing up and getting candy is Satanic," by answering, "You're having this trouble because it's not."

I don't even have a problem per se with ghouls and ghosts--we can celebrate Jesus' victory over the forces of death and hell by mocking them, it seems to me. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. However, nobody here is really into that, so it's a non-issue for now.

I have discovered, though, that we are fair-weather Halloween celebrators. Back in Cincinnati we lived in a cozy little neighborhood with sidewalks, Halloween was usually dry and often still rather warm, and it didn't get dark until after dinner at least. It was the perfect time to be out and greeting the neighbors. DOB's boss also had a big family Halloween party that was always a blast.

Here, it's pitch dark and pouring rain and our neighborhood has no sidewalks, just ditches and trucks running by at forty miles an hour. This makes trick or treating entirely unpleasant and the only suitable costumes are Flood Response Team and Fisherman in Hipwaders.

So we have become church carnival attenders, which allows greater variety in costumes and stocks us up with enough candy to last until Christmas. (I use it as a simple bribe, especially for the twins: Get dressed ALL BY YOURSELF and you can have a piece.)

We might have had a trick-or-treater at our house, but it's hard to tell. Nobody knows which is our front door, so by the time we answer all the doors, whoever it was and wherever they were, they have given up and gone away.

The State of Things

It's been a bit crazy, though at least no one has had the flu.

We instituted dire threats (my purse is full of socks and rubber bands) and they are doing better at keeping hands out of mouths. We'll see how long it works.

DOB's feet continue poorly, rapidly followed by the rest of him, and he is now waiting on the insurance company to approve and the doohickey companies to make braces and a shiny new wheelchair so that he can get around again under his own power and hopefully build strength back.

In the meantime, to keep the case load from completely exploding, I've been spending more time at his office. I'm trying to get case management software set up and do random miscellaneous research and drafting projects of the variety that he hates and I love. It works out fairly well, although perhaps I should stop trying to Keep School On Schedule at the same time. Still, it's something we'd like to make work long-term, so maybe I shouldn't.

We finished sorting through the books and now have all the books we want to keep on the shelves. It is a very happy thing. Until we get more books.

The children are planning to go to a church carnival tonight and have, as usual, assembled their own costumes out of things they found in the basement. Someday I hope my children remember me for encouraging their initiative, creativity and independence. That is, I hope they don't remember me for never doing creative things for them.

And in related news (that is, news of relatives), Toolboy's recovery from stomach surgery is not going so well after all and he is flat on his back again until it finishes. Meanwhile, Toolbaby number two is due no later than Friday. Prayers for a rapid recovery and a very smooth delivery would be appreciated.

What are We Good For?

The Veggietales situation as well as an interesting discussion on the homeschool forum that I seldom wish to be snarky on reminds me of one of my ongoing issues as a parent: What is the point of teaching children to behave?

Yes, I have to think through things like this. I cannot do something consistently if I don't have a good reason for doing it. When the children were very small, this lead to conversations with Wondergirl like this:

Wondergirl: Are your children allowed to climb on the coffee table?
Me: I don't know, none of them have gotten up there before. Let me think about it.
Child, falling off the table: WAAAAHHH!!
Me: OK, that's a reason. I guess not.

When it comes to moral behavior, though, I think it's an especially important question. Not only is it important for me to be clear in my mind why I am requiring good behavior of them, it's important for me to communicate it clearly to them.

Most of the books about how to be a Good Christian Parent take the duty of inculcating moral behavior very, very seriously, but I'm not usually very comfortable with the idea of why. Are we hoping to make our children better Christians by teaching them to behave? Well, that's patently wrong. Anything that gives them the impression they are more acceptable in God's sight because they behave themselves is just raising a little Pharisee who won't even think they need a savior. (And, as icky as I find it to imagine saying, "You make Mommy very sad when you do that," I find it ten times ickier to say, "You make Jesus very sad when you do that," as if Jesus gets his feelings hurt and is going to sulk until we apologize nicely.)

Then there are the people who come in opposition to that to say that the point of our parenting should be to reveal to our children just how evil their little hearts are. If we come down off Mount Sinai with smashing tablets, or just preach a come-to-Jesus sermon every time they slug their little brother, we may, someday, lead them to cry 'mercy' and find Jesus. While this has some internal logic, I have yet to see it be effective in practice, leading usually to children who simply give up before they get to the grace part.

I am not the Holy Spirit. I cannot convict of sin. I cannot bring repentance. I cannot bring forgiveness. I cannot bring sanctification. I am just a fellow sinner and recipient of grace, sharing what I know.

So what's the point of teaching them to behave? It's kind of like the exchange between George Bailey and Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life:
George: You don't happen to have 8,000 bucks on you?
Clarence (chuckling): No, we don't use money in Heaven.
George: Well, it comes in real handy down here, bud!

Good behavior isn't needed for Heaven. But it comes in handy down here. It's not always the easiest or most pleasant thing to do, but overall, it was given to us for our good. And knowing about what is right helps us understand more about who God is--about the beauty and order and relationships he made us to have.

Ultimately, we learn to behave simply because it's right. You don't hit your little brother, not because of how it makes Jesus or Mommy feel, but because it's wrong to treat other people that way. Jesus can take our badness (in fact, he already has), but little brother is smooshable and needs to be treated rightly.

Hygiene, Fluids, and Why I Don't Care That Much for Veggietales

Some day, we will have had all the stomach viruses there are. Except maybe dysentery, I'm hoping we can skip that.

Another possibility is that we will someday convince the children that licking their hands in public places is not a good idea. But they are like the Bulgy Bears in Prince Caspian and all our prayers and tears and threats cannot seem to keep them from absent-mindedly stuffing them in. 

Anyway, this was the second round this year, though thankfully this one did not affect grownups nearly so severely. I think I had it last week, but mostly I just felt tired and icky for several days. Duchess threw up once, spent the next day moping about and sipping clear fluids, and demanded to start school last Monday.

The rest of the kids waited until this weekend. Dash got it first and worst. By the time we got to Monday morning, he had kept nothing down for four days and was barely opening his eyes. I had tried the full round of hydration tricks to no avail. I took him in to the doctor, who put him on an IV for a couple of hours. That got him coherent enough to comment on the numbers at the pharmacy windows, but not enough to stand on his own two feet. He spent another two days inert on the couch. I figured he was better this morning when he started yelling for more breakfast to be brought. He hadn't spoken above a whimper since Saturday. When he started telling knock-knock jokes, I knew for sure. Dot and Deux were never in danger, but they were still very out of it for a few days.

The funny thing is, thanks to the three messiest children being unable to get up, the house stayed tidier than ever throughout the course of the sickness. They're out busy messing it up right now. But it was good while it lasted.

Yesterday I finally gave in and permitted them to watch some Veggietales to pass the time. We have some Veggietales from pre-children days. We have not, up until now, really allowed them to watch them. But they were handy and it kept everybody from hollering while I took the garbages out and scrubbed the bathroom.

My misgivings about them were confirmed when Dot chirpily said to me at supper, "Did you know God is happy when we share?" In other words, the message is (a) we learn about God so that we can know how to behave properly and (b) our good behavior makes us acceptable to God. Not to mention the whole talking down to children, as if all they can handle is sanitized moralizing in the simplest terms. (This is, after all, a child who carried on a prolonged conversation with me about whether God could be real or not if we couldn't see Him. She can handle richer fare than "God wants us to share.")

I do like the humor in Veggietales. But the only part I really find suitable for impressionable children is Silly Songs with Larry: "If you go a little loopy better keep your nurse well-paid." Now there's an important moral.

Around the block

We squeezed in another trip after summer had officially ended but before the rains came. This one took us all the way around the Olympic Peninsula. Our first stop was at Hurricane Ridge, where we at long last got to go up in the mountains. Everybody is sketching pictures of forest fires in the picture, although there were none visible that day. (There was some smoke blowing over from the Cascades, though. Canada looked pretty hazy.) DOB had the excitement of driving down mountain roads in a new truck with hand controls. We all got to practice being very, very quiet.

The next day we had wanted to go all the way out to Neah Bay, Cape Flattery and the northwesternmost corner of the state (and the contiguous United States), but we decided it was too far of a drive. Instead we settled on lunch at Lake Crescent, which is a dazzling blue lake dropped in the middle of the mountains (and conveniently located right off Highway 101).

We spent the next two nights in a vacation rental on the Bogachiel River, relaxing, throwing rocks in the river, and feeding cows.

Then we ventured on south, to the Hoh Rain Forest. (That's a fallen tree the kids are walking down, in case you can't tell.) It felt pretty dry, for the rain forest, but everything has its season.

Ron managed to persuade a camp robber (gray jay) to eat off his hat. You had to eat fast if you wanted to keep your sandwich.

Our last two nights were down in Pacific Beach and were less photogenic. We took advantage of YMCA reciprocality, found out our favorite nature center was closed during the week, and spent a couple more hours at the beach, which, surprisingly, still had plenty of sand. We did what we could to remedy that, and we watched "Pirates of Penzance" (kids) "The Princess Bride" (everybody, minus the ROUS and Pit of Despair), and "Horatio Hornblower" (grownups).

Elliptical

This whole fitness thing, is, of course, a modern luxury--and necessity. In the olden days, people did not have scales to weigh on or jeans to fit into. Of course, they didn't really need them, since they had to walk twenty miles uphill both ways to get drinking water (which is weird because water flows downhill), or if they were rich, to socialize while their servants fetched it. Still, if you were a rich introvert who lived next to the river, you could just loosen the belt on your tunic a little every year and thank God for your blessings, especially that photography hadn't been invented yet.

My fitness follows its own cycle, like this:

1. I notice that my jeans are not so comfy anymore. I realize I have two options: (a) exercise; (b) go shopping. Nothing is more painful than going shopping, so I decide to exercise.
2. I get up early one morning and do my strength-training workout. I am so together! I am strong and disciplined!
3. I spend the next four days moaning and unable to walk down stairs. I consider the possibility that there are things more painful than going shopping. I straggle through another couple of workouts.
4. The workouts become easier. I do reps between cooking a nutritious breakfast for my children and still am ready to start school on time. Everybody hates me, including me. My jeans start to fit better.
5. A major life crisis occurs, usually involving everyone puking simultaneously, or three out of four parental feet being injured. I drop exercising because I need that time to clean up puke. I eat whatever I can scavenge and I don't sleep well at all.
6. It takes several weeks to recover from the crisis, get the laundry put away, and get back on schedule.

At this point, return to step 1.

It's probably just as well, though, because if I kept going for too long, my jeans might be too big and I would have to go shopping anyway. (Of course, sooner or later clothes wear out, but I try to hide that fact from myself.)

Sixes and Sevens

I bought new shoes. Have I mentioned that I hate wearing tennis shoes all the time? At least now I'm wearing tennis shoes that aren't five years old and shredding chunks. And the new ones are a subdued gray/blue combination, which is as good as tennis shoes get. Apparently they don't make tennis shoes in earth tones. I also got new inserts with even more support in all the right places. The chiropractor says the foot is getting better, but it still hurts, just in different places. I hope he's right.

DOB's foot is not getting better. He has a ruptured tendon. We're still figuring out what to do about this, but one of the things has been selling his very beloved Camaro and replacing it with an extended cab truck with hand controls. That way, no matter what his foot is doing he'll be able to drive the family around and have room for a wheelchair in the back. We tried me driving the family around and discovered that it doesn't work very well. DOB is sad about the Camaro, but the kids like to dance and eat muffins in the back of the truck.

At long last, we have put up bookcases. His Majesty picked them up in conjunction with buying all the furniture for Bookworm's Seattle condo. Bookworm came over and helped assemble them. However, she prefers not to do stepladders, which left me at the top of the ladder, trying to find the studs in order to attach them to the wall. I tapped and drilled a hole where it sounded right. No stud. I moved an inch over to the left and tapped again. No stud. Then I got frustrated and started drilling a whole row of holes, each one inch apart. No studs.

Then I remembered that Bookworm had said studs were 16 inches apart, so I measured out from the corner. There was a stud right in between my first two holes. You can't see the holes from the ground.

After we got it all up and attached I decided we should have put the whole row of bookcases about 9 inches further to the left. Too late. Anyway, there are bookcases up now, and most of the books are on them--we still have some culling to do to fit the history and biographies on.

Toolboy had stomach surgery last week, and His Majesty had a knee replacement. They are both recovering pretty well, last I heard.

Organizing things puts me in a bad mood. (Well, not just organizing things. Organizing things by myself and then having to stop and fix dinner and interact with children puts me in a bad mood.) I was in a really bad mood by Saturday, so I cleaned the whole house. I usually clean when I'm crabby. Sometimes it makes me feel better, and if it doesn't, at least I can be crabby in a clean house.

Sand Dollars

Last weekend we went to the beach. Most of it came home with us.

There might still be some beach there, if you go look. Maybe they dump it out of the vacuum cleaners at the beach houses and recycle it. 

We did not bring all the seaweed home. Or all the dead crabs. Each sand dollar contained a dollar's worth of sand.

Some of us liked the surf. Others preferred to stay as far away from the waves as possible, preferably under a large and sturdy log.

Nobody got sunburned and we never got around to roasting marshmallows. We ate way too many cookies, though.

It was most fun. (Except for the speeding ticket. For going 40. That's just wrong.) Credits for the pictures go to other people, since as usual, I forgot my camera.

 

Not the end

You will pry summer out of my cold, dead fingernails.

I don't care that the back-to-school sales are over.

I don't care that everyone else is going back to school. Or already went back to school.

I don't care that the temperature is barely getting out of the sixties.

La la la

I can't hear you.

It's still summertime.

It's the best part of summertime, when the night start coming earlier and the kids can go out on the porch after dark and make wishes. When the tomatoes overload the vines and the first apples come in and peaches are so cheap it's embarrassing.

Soon the beaches will clear and the classrooms will fill and everybody else will be breaking in new shoes and twills but we will still be wearing ragged cut-offs and crocs and squeezing the last bit of juice out of the last few days.

I like fall, too, though it always makes me sad. It has its time. But there are still three full weeks of summer to go, and I intend to make the most of them.

This Week in Short Spurts

Made zucchini fritters. They were tasty.

The big kids decided they wanted to earn money and swept and mopped the floor (not quite as well as I would have done) and folded the laundry (much better than I would have done. I have no idea where Duchess learned to fold like that). Then they lost interest in earning money for awhile. Every once in awhile I debate the merits of encouraging them to be greedier. (Yes, they do have regular chores they do without money.)

While the big kids were mopping the floor, the twins picked blackberries. And came in with their hands full of blackberries and no way to reach any dishes. Dash finally smeared them against his shirt.

Got one project in Tuesday night that was due Thursday at noon. Gone all day running errands Wednesday. Got another project Wednesday evening, also due Thursday at noon.

Was very tired on Friday.

The big kids went with Their Majesties and Bookworm to the county fair. They had a marvelous time and came back with quaint little calico stuffed animals (cat for Duchess, seahorse for Deux) and ping pong ball eyeballs.

Saw a teenager scaring seagulls off at the park. The children were  horrified. Later in the week, walked with the twins past a spot where litter is often seen. Dash remarked, "What person puts garbage on the ground? Maybe someone who scares birds!" Perhaps I'm not raising them to be complete hooligans. Or perhaps I'm just raising them to be judgmental snobs. Actually I think all children are born that way.

Toolboy led a crew of other family members in erecting our monster, scary, huge playset that we disassembled and brought here a month or so ago. Now it is up and it is big and the ducklings are having a blast with it. It's still missing a few key things, like long enough chains for the swings and boards to replace the rotten ones on the deck, but as far as the ducklings are concerned, it's an optimal pirate ship/play house/rocket/whatever.

In learning to play role-playing games, killed a giant Venus flytrap and two manticores. This was an improvement from last week, when it took us all night to kill one giant porcupine.

Left my cell phone and house keys next to my purse instead of in it, which resulted in them bouncing off the car as we left the driveway. The phone was found by a jogger, who returned it, and the keys were still lying where they fell.

Knock, knock

Every family with children reaches this stage at some point.

Jokes.

Waiter, what's this fly doing in my soup?
Learning to swim, sir.

Jokes, riddles, knock-knock books.

They have found where the library files them and they check them out in stacks. Deux is the prime proponent, but the others participate. They keep them in cars and read them off to each other as we drive, reciting them like a litany of humor:

Why did the elephant paint its toenails red?
So it could hide in the cherry tree.

 The twins are technically too young for this stage, but they participate in it just as eagerly as the big kids. Whether they actually get the jokes or not is impossible to tell. They have them all memorized, anyway.

Six copycats were in a car and one got out. How many were left in the car?
None, they were copycats!

I remember when my younger siblings found the Bennet Cerf Book of Riddles and read and repeated them as if they were a new discovery of mankind. And in my adolescent superiority I rolled my eyes. Those old things. I knew them all when I was eight.

Doctor, doctor, when will my measles get better?
I don't know, I don't like to make rash predictions.

Ah, but they are new. The universe is reborn 490,000 times every day. And somewhere, every day, a child picks up a joke book for the first time and "gets" their first pun.

 What time is it when you go to the dentist?
Two thirty!

What I do with my summer vacation

Bookworm is somewhat at loose ends until college starts in the fall, so she offered to come over and help me with organizational things. I organize much better if there is another adult person in the house, ready to tell me, "Yes, throw it away!" (unlike the children who inevitably think of thirty new uses for it.) Also, Bookworm is an engineer, and therefore was able to figure out how to combine two old, odd-shaped bookcases into one bookcase the right shape for the space--and also how to stabilize it so it would not fall over. This involved using my hand saw and the end of  a board we found lying around and the edge of the porch and my foot. (I used my bad foot so if it got injured things would not be significantly worse.) So, now I have--at no extra cost--a school shelf that is actually deep enough to hold school-type materials, which makes me very, very happy.

In the meantime, the kids were busy with the pool, specifically with filling the entire pool with dirt, rocks, and bicycles.  They like to do that kind of thing.

Adaptation

My foot is still hurt. But it might be getting better. Maybe.

The chiropractor thinks it's a sprain under the transverse arch. All I have to do is keep it taped and rested and in a shoe with proper arch support.

Taped I have figured out (after a few very messy first tries.) Rested is harder. Doing the dishes and the laundry and the necessary potty runs is still just a little more than qualifies as rest. But not nearly enough activity to keep me feeling like a rational human being. I was not born to be a couch potato.

The kids are trying to help out, of course, and doing extra chores (liberally bribed with computer games). But I find there is a sequence to new chores.

Stage 1 (Novelty): Oh, yes! We can definitely do that! We are so competent! We will be running the whole house for you soon! Is there anything else we can do?

Stage 2 (Reaction): Gahhh! Not that again! We just had to do it yesterday! My leg hurts! And my arm! And several other body parts I only just found out I had!

Stage 3 (Routine): OK, fine, let me finish this chapter first. And maybe the one after that. But definitely before supper.

We have been at this long enough for Stage 2 to appear.

Granted, the foot might have gotten better if I had not compromised on several things over the weekend, specifically in cleaning the whole house for company on Sunday and in wearing shoes that were not tennis shoes to church. And then wearing other shoes that were not tennis shoes for family pictures.

So now I have vowed to ignore both cleanliness and fashion until the foot really is better.

DOB has been helping out by taking the kids grocery shopping. (Which means they do the grocery shopping while he follows along in the riding cart.) It's still an arduous undertaking, especially after work, and especially since there is no way to bring a car close to any door of our house. This week he had them load up the wagon repeatedly to unload the car. We eat a lot of groceries.

DOB has also resolved the lack-of-physical-activity problem by putting me on his YMCA membership and sending me off to swim. Swimming is not my sport of choice. I *can* swim, in the sense that if I fell out of a rowboat I could remain on the surface for some time, but I cannot swim in the sense in which people who swim at the Y regularly swim. My attempts at the crawl stroke resulted in a large lump on the head, collision with the far side of the lane (miraculously not the swimmer using that side), and a whole lot of lungfuls of wet hair (my hair mocks at restraint). My attempts at using the kickboard took about five minutes each direction. Apparently I have completely forgotten how to kick. Meanwhile the small children and elderly zipped past me on either side, leaving me feeling like a lobster among porpoises. I finally discovered that a (probably dreadful) breast stroke allowed me to see where I was going and progress at a reasonable speed.

But I did swim, and it did make me feel better. So I shall persist, for now, until I can walk again. I like walking. The scenery is better. The coordination is less. And I don't have to drive to get there.

Deux tells a story

Deux (arranging various small plastic figures): So the king told the soldiers that if they were afraid of the frogs, then the frogs would hurt them, but if they weren't afraid of the frogs, then the frogs wouldn't hurt them. But actually, if they were afraid of the frogs then the frogs wouldn't hurt them and if they weren't afraid of the frogs then the frogs would hurt them.

Me: So, ummm, what happened then?

Deux: Well, they believed what the king said that if they weren't afraid of the frogs they wouldn't hurt them so they weren't afraid of the frogs, but it was really the other way around where if they weren't afraid of the frogs the frogs would hurt them, so the frogs hurt them.