Month: February 2016

Working in the Backyard

Those Leyland Cypresses have really been a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they provided a bit of privacy. On the other hand, they were a terrible nuisance to trim, and they were very very susceptible to disease and pests.

The last few months, though, one has given way to some kind of illness. I don’t know what it is. I don’t really care — it’s not a battle I was willing to fight. I knew I could never win that battle, so K and I decided to take down the entire tree. And the other two.

Second on the agenda: finish the sump pump system. The pit and pump have been installed for some time now, but the actual outlet was only a temporary fix. As of today, it’s a little more permanent. Still not the perfect solution, but it should work.

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And finally, wings for dinner. A perfect Saturday.

Under Us, Around Us, In Us

I know nothing about mold other then the fact that it appears on bread. I’ve worked out this little personal equation that the purity of the bread is proportional to the speed with which it becomes covered in mold: the sooner, the better as it indicates few preservatives. But when it comes to mold in the house, I’m lost.

We have mold in the crawl space. A slow leak that went completely undiscovered for several weeks is all it took to create a wonderful little breeding ground for the stuff. Specifically, we have, according the the report we received, Cladasporium and “Pen./Asp”, which a quick search reveals as “Aspergillus and Penicillium.” A little more research was clearly in order.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “common indoor molds” are

  • Cladosporium
  • Penicillium
  • Alternaria
  • Aspergillus

In other words, our three molds represent 75% of the most common molds. So it’s nothing rare, and it’s really not even anything that’s not already naturally present in the air to some degree or other.

The CDC further explains,

Generally, it is not necessary to identify the species of mold growing in a residence, and CDC does not recommend routine sampling for molds. Current evidence indicates that allergies are the type of diseases most often associated with molds. Since the susceptibility of individuals can vary greatly either because of the amount or type of mold, sampling and culturing are not reliable in determining your health risk. If you are susceptible to mold and mold is seen or smelled, there is a potential health risk; therefore, no matter what type of mold is present, you should arrange for its removal. Furthermore, reliable sampling for mold can be expensive, and standards for judging what is and what is not an acceptable or tolerable quantity of mold have not been established.

Of course, regardless of the mold type, the amount seems to be just as important if not more than the type. All the sites I used in the research spoke of mold counts, some of them absolute (“spores per cubic meter”) and some of them relative (“10 times the outside count”). Our report indicated “very low” levels of Cladosporium and “low” levels of Aspergillus and Penicillium. This seems even more useless than “x times the outside count,” which itself seems fairly useless. Worse still, the CDC states that “[s]tandards for judging what is an acceptable, tolerable, or normal quantity of mold have not been established.” In addition, the WHO suggests that the best way to test for mold is with a culture test, and our test is labeled “Direct Microscopic Examination Report,” which indicates someone put the stuff on a slide and looked at it under a microscope, which would mean the concentration was determined by counting or even estimating.

The first mold remediation company came out and tested our crawl space and gave us a quote for taking care of the problem: $2200. This included “basement encapsulation,” which promised to prevent the problem from happening again. The insulation, he assured us, wouldn’t need to be changed. After all, it’s glass. All told, two days’ work.

The second company came out and basically said the problem was even worse than the first company said. The whole kitchen floor and subfloor needs to be replaced, they explained. The insulation in the entire crawl space would need replacing, as would the heavy plastic vapor barrier.  The gentleman looked at our mold report from the other contractor and felt it inadequate. It would be better to use their testing services, for a mere $500, to get a true picture of the problem. All told, eight days’ work, he said. The quote: $12,000. As with the $20,000 replacement window quote, I would have found it hard to keep a straight face were it not for the fact that the gentleman delivered the quote by phone to K about half an hour after he left.

And so where do we stand? A crawl space with some amount of mold that according to “experts” hovers gently between dangerous and deadly (judging from the quotes) filled with insulation that may or may not need to be replaced, and a vapor barrier that needs to be replaced to varying degrees.

Burnt Norton

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Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.

Everything I do in life teaches my children something. I try to remember that, but it’s not always in the forefront of my thoughts. Still, whether I remember it or not, such is the reality. How I treat K teaches L how a man should treat a woman, how a husband should treat a wife, and E learns the same lessons from the other perspective. How I respond to disasters, real and imagined, teaches them how they should respond in such situations. Their future, in other words, is contained in our present.

I, in turn, learned how to behave by watching my own parents, and they from theirs. Being human, we sometimes give good bad examples, but that’s part of the limitations of humanity — concupiscence, as the Catholic Church describes it:

In its widest acceptation, concupiscence is any yearning of the soul for good; in its strict and specific acceptation, a desire of the lower appetite contrary to reason. To understand how the sensuous and the rational appetite can be opposed, it should be borne in mind that their natural objects are altogether different. The object of the former is the gratification of the senses; the object of the latter is the good of the entire human nature and consists in the subordination of reason to God, its supreme good and ultimate end. But the lower appetite is of itself unrestrained, so as to pursue sensuous gratifications independently of the understanding and without regard to the good of the higher faculties. Hence desires contrary to the real good and order of reason may, and often do, rise in it, previous to the attention of the mind, and once risen, dispose the bodily organs to the pursuit and solicit the will to consent, while they more or less hinder reason from considering their lawfulness or unlawfulness.

A fancy way of saying our tendency toward the less refined appetites in life.

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And then there are the other lessons: teaching the kids how to raise kids. Playing with them is always critical, but sometimes those lower appetites get in the way, the selfish appetites, the desire to do one’s own thing because “I’m tired” or whatever silly excuse.

Incomplete thoughts on an incomplete evening…

Free Monday

A Monday with no school means fussing over who gets to help make the coffee, playing school, playing board games with apple and peanut butter snacks, working puzzles, helping warm up soup for dinner, watching the weather for possible ice, and digging out old Pooh Bear costumes and honey.

Sunday

To play, you have to make a mess. You have to dump everything into the floor, spread it about a bit, and take stock of what you have to play with. Ideally, all your toys will have been thoroughly mixed through weeks of “chaotic” play that is only chaotic to the uninitiated. To the experienced player, there’s a pattern in the mix of Jenga blocks, puzzle cubes, wooden train parts, and wood blocks that exists on a sort of quantum level. Add a basket of cars and a hobby horse and you have just about everything a little boy needs for a Sunday afternoon.

Field Trip

Last night, L and I went to see the last performance of Matilda the Musical here in Greenville. She’d read the book earlier and was eager to see the show, and K gave me tickets for us as the sweetest and perfectly thoughtful birthday present I’ve received. And so we headed out in the late afternoon and came back in the late evening completely enthralled with what we’d see and talking about what we might see next. (Junie B Jones is coming later, but I think I’ll let K take the Girl for that particular one.)

Ironically, we went on a school field trip to the same venue this morning.

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Odd, the difference between taking your own daughter to a show and taking 250+ thirteen-year-olds…

Serve

“Do you have a sponsor?” A simple question several years ago in RCIA as I moved back toward theism and turned toward the Catholic church. A simple answer: “No.” “Well, we’ll have Joe C. be your sponsor then.”

I’d seen Joe, a tall, lanky gentleman with a clean-shaved head, serving as emcee during Mass, but I had no idea who he was. Shortly after my short response to the simple question, though, I found out who he was. And in talking to him, I found out what kind of man he is. Quiet, humble, kind. A runner who gets up before four in the morning to complete all his rituals — running, prayer, adoration on some days — before heading to work, possibly to the 6:00 a.m. Mass beforehand. Always ready to serve, it seems like.

Today, he and seventeen other men — four men total from our parish — were ordained to the diaconate. K went to sing in the choir; I went to support my sponsor. Perhaps not as he’d supported me, for he is my elder chronologically and spiritually.

And the rest of the day?

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Learning

My job is about learning. It’s about teaching, too, but the more I stand on this side of the desk, the more I realize that teaching is learning. It’s not just the simple process — as if it were so simple in truth — of learning how to teach. There’s that, certainly. I’m better this year than I was last year, I hope. I’m better this year than I was five years ago, I’m sure. I’m better this year than I was fifteen years ago, I know.

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It’s not pedagogy and method that I have in mind, though. I’ve learned that learning is so much more than simply figuring out how to write a good paragraph, understanding how to do geometric proofs, seeing the logic of the scientific method. These things are all well and good — and important. But they all serve as simple means to ends. We learn to write a good paragraph to be able to communicate better. We work on proofs to be able to construct a scaffold of surety around our knowledge — to prove to ourselves what is is. (And to move on to higher and more challenging math.) We study the scientific method because it’s the best way to find out things about the physical world.

All this knowledge helps us in our day to day functioning, but it does very little to help with our living. I’m not more at peace with myself because I can write a paragraph. I can’t show compassion better because I can manage geometric proofs. I’m not more mature because I know the scientific process. My life can bump along just fine without this knowledge, and having this understanding is in now way insulation or protection against anything. I’m not a better person for this.

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I’m a better person when I connect with other people. I’m a better person when I understand that the most precious and instructive moments in life are those flashes when a couple of people connect in a real and meaningful way.

I teach my students how to make sense of Shakespeare (and, by proxy, many other challenging texts), and I show them how to organize a paragraph coherently, then how to string several paragraphs together in a logical order. Useful skills, but not life changing. Yet sometimes I get so wrapped up in the importance of those minutia (relatively speaking) that I miss the real teaching and learning opportunities. I forget that just because they’re not learning just what I want in just the way I planned it than my students aren’t learning. I forget that just because what they’re doing for a particular session has nothing to do with English than they’re not become better people. I forget that, at it’s base, that’s what all good teaching is about. There’s the subject matter, true, but all the teachers we really remember taught us more than just their subject matter. In some rare cases, we can sometimes barely even remember what exactly they taught us about English or math or Spanish, but we remember what they taught us about life.

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Today, I had the privilege of taking about twenty of my students down the street to a community center than has a trice-weekly seniors program. The plan was simple. The plan didn’t work as planned due to technical issues. And so from a certain point of view, it was a complete waste of time. It didn’t do what I wanted it to do. The plan didn’t behave properly. And in that mini-disaster, I learned once again — my students taught me once again — that there’s more to teaching and learning than nouns and rays and Erlenmeyer flasks.

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Sometimes lessons just come along than can’t be planned because the lessons themselves come simply from the messiness and unpredictability of life. Sometimes a room full of teens and seniors offers such individualized lessons that could never be planned, never be executed because life can often never really be planned. And that in itself is part of the lesson.

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In the afternoon, another lesson about learning: not all learning has any adults at all involved. The kids headed out for their quarterly (or is it more often? I can never remember) reward day, which consists basically of forty-five minutes of freedom outside. Some kids play basketball; some kids play soccer. Some kids walk around and gossip orally; some kids walk around and gossip electronically.

And some kids just do a little bit of everything. The lessons there? Countless, and completely unplanned.

Back at home, L asked K to help her with a traditional Polish dance that she’d like to use to try out for the school talent show later this year. Tryouts are coming soon, and the Girl is not quite sure what she’s going to do. This is the first year she’s eligible, so she’s feeling a bit stressed about making a good impression. She’d noticed that all the Indian students in the past who’d done traditional dances made it to the show itself, so she reasoned that a Polish Highlander dance might stand a good chance.

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So K began working on it with her. I’m not quite sure how this is supposed to work because Polish Highlander dances are really not solos — unless you’re dancing a male part. This bit of information prompted a bit of begging from the Girl, so K showed a few male moves. And E decided he wanted to learn them all, male moves and female moves.

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Another unplanned lesson.

They’re really all around us. The opportunities are endless. And the miracle of it all is that we really don’t even have to be aware of it.

Priorities

The Boy woke up this morning already discussing the obstacle course we could create that day. “First I’ll go to school. Then I’ll come home. And when you come home from school, we’ll build the obstacle course!” It was the highlight of his morning, this little future utopia that was only hours away.

When I arrived home, though, he was asleep. It happens some times — he’s about to outgrow that nap, but every now and then, he falls asleep. Perhaps it’s when he and K are in the car line to pick up L. Maybe it’s watching a little TV with L after she’s done her homework. Perhaps it just a random “Mommy, I’m tired” situation. Whatever the cause today, he was asleep.

“Good,” I thought. “Just enough time to have a bit of coffee and relax for a few moments.” Just as the Boy looked forward to his afternoon obstacle course, I always look forward to that afternoon coffee. I put some water on and chatted with K about the day when suddenly from upstairs came an excited call: “Daddy!” That in itself was surprising: it’s always K whom he calls for. Not today. “Daddy, we can build the obstacle course!”

I went up to his room and started negotiating. “Well, first we have to do a little cooking.”

“Yeah, sure, sure!” he said. The Boy loves cooking, and I knew this wouldn’t be a problem. The next item, though, might be a little troublesome.

“Also, I have a little school work to do. How about you watch a Might Machines episode while I drink my coffee and finish up my work?” I suggested.

“Okay. I love Might Machines.” And who wouldn’t?

After coffee and Machines, it was time for kiełbasa. We had to cut up a link of sausage (read: I had to cut it up) and fry it. The Boy helped with the latter. He’s our professional stirrer. If anything needs stirring, providing it’s not spitting and bubbling too violently, he’s the man for the job.

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It’s sometimes more trouble than help: he hasn’t mastered the gentle stir, and he tends to get a little excited and send various foods flying onto the cook top. Such was the case tonight.

“Daddy, some fell out.” I’d pick up the sausage piece, toss it back in, and wait for the next one. “Daddy, some more fell out.” One piece, two pieces. He tried putting it back in himself, but by the time he got the nerve up to try it, the sausage was quite hot.

Finally, we were all done.

“Obstacle course?!”

“Obstacle course.”

“Hurrah!”

Up the stairs we went, discussing our options.

“I want one just like the one yesterday.”

“I’m not sure I can make it like that again.” I didn’t mention the picture I had taken of it, nor the fact that I could in theory use the picture to recreate it almost perfectly. I wanted to try something else.

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“It’s more of a maze than an obstacle course,” L observed when she got home from dance classes.

It got me to thinking about two different metaphors for life: mazes and obstacle courses. Which would be a more optimistic view? And how much more optimistic? A maze seems almost hopelessly impossible when it’s life-size and you’re stuck in it, I would imagine. At least with an obstacle course, one can theoretically see the end. But in the end, they both seem just a touch too negative. For most of us, life isn’t a game. Indeed, games and play in general, most child psychologists would argue, I think, are really only dress rehearsals for “real” life. Life is like a maze — at times. It’s like an obstacle course — at times. And sometimes it’s a couple of pieces of sausage tumbling from the frying pan.

Build and Destroy

“Daddy, let’s play!” chirps the Boy with such excitement, such genuine joy and anticipation, that it’s difficult to say “No.” Sadly, I do have to say just that occasionally.

“I’m working in the yard,” I explain, and then he responds, “Oh, I’ll come help you.”

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Another time: “I have to grade papers.” That’s really a misnomer because most of my students’ work is now online, which means I’m sitting at a computer when “grading papers.” And so comes the obvious: “Oh, I’ll just sit on your lap while you work.”

Every now and then, though, I’m able to beat him to the idea. Such was the case tonight. “E, let’s play.”

“Let’s play!” came the response.

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So we headed up to his room, discussing our options as we went. Whatever else might be involved, cars are a prerequisite. Want to build something with Legos? Fine, as long as it’s a device to work on cars. Want to create something with wooden blocks? Great, as long as it’s a miasto — a city for his cars to drive around.

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Today, though, I thought we might try something new: an obstacle course.

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The ladies, in the meantime, were downstairs, struggling through Polish lessons. It can be a challenge. Part of it is the simple fact that it’s more schooling after a day of school. But more challenging, I think, is the Girl’s reluctance to make mistakes. She flies through work at school, catching on quickly and mastering skills without much effort, it seems. “Math is boring now,” she says. But Polish? It’s not so easy. It’s not mistake-free. And even though she has a linguistic master in the house, she hesitates.

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Once she got the work done, though, she came up to join us.

And then disaster struck: “E, it’s time for a bath. Let’s clean up.” The fact that we could rebuild did nothing to comfort him. The fact that I promised we could rebuild tomorrow did nothing to soothe him. Now is now; tomorrow is unimaginable. “But Daddy,” he sobbed, “I have to get up, and go to school, and then we can build it.” I can understand that frustration. I experience it. I see it in my students. And I see how some of them deal with it. So when the Boy and I finished with the clean up, and he was still sniffing, I took him in my arms and said, “That was a very difficult thing to do. No one likes to do something they don’t really want to do.” Perhaps in destroying, we were able to build some character.

“Okay,” he said. And by bath time, five minutes later, it was completely forgotten.