around the house
Progress
The Boy declared, “This is a lot of fun.”
Working Monday
The Boy and I spent the day working, working like I never really do during the school year. Actual work. Sweaty work. Blister-biting work. Aching working. A friend — who helped us remodel our kitchen two years, without whom we would have been completely and totally lost — is making an addition to his house. Like our house, it’s brick veneer, and he won’t be able to match the brick perfectly with what’s available now, so we’re taking down the veneer from one end of the house.
We came home sweaty and tired yet satisfied.
And what did we do afterward, after a shower and lunch and a bit of relaxing? We went back outside to play soccer for almost an hour and get sweaty again.
We took on roles — E is Ronaldo while I’m Lewandowski — and played a game that must have been some kind of record as far as scoring goes: 18-14. I scored two goals accidentally: I blocked his attempts to kick the ball by me and surge to the net and the ball rolled into his net.
We were going to head out after dinner to finish the game, but a storm rolled in, so we sat and cheered K on as she made the latest batch of pickles.
Tomorrow, we do it all again — probably even the pickles, considering the amount of cucumbers we have.
Cleaning Up
Pressure
You just can't do any work without the Boy wanting to get involved.
It's ridiculous the amount of gunk that was in the concrete seams.
Mama
The raccoon family that lives in the hole in the sweetgum tree at the corner of our neighbor's yard has had this year's brood.
Every now and then mama comes out to check on what's going on in the neighborhood.
Saturday in the Yard
The bushes in front of the house had just gotten out of hand: they shaded almost 3/4 of the height of the windows in E's and L's rooms. Every time I trimmed them, K suggested that I didn't do enough, so today was the day: the bushes were getting violently trimmed.
That was to take only a couple of hours. I'd planned on mowing the backyard, trimming the bushes, mowing the front, and finishing before four. Two things slowed me down: E and the difficulty of radically trimming the bushes.
The Boy always loves helping me mow, which usually entails slipping between me and the upper bar of the lawnmower, resulting in an awkward position for me and generally slow mowing. Today it struck me: our lawnmower has rear-wheel drive, and so theoretically, the Boy could mow all by himself, with me just walking along beside to help control it.
When we got to the flattest portions of the front yard, I let him mow without my hand on the bar to guide it.
"I'll just let you mow," I said, "and then the spots you miss, you'll have to go back and get."
He loved the idea and promptly went zig-zagging across the yard. He tended to pull to the left, so he made strange arching patterns instead of the regular straight lines I obsessively put into our yard.
The period of time between the first bit of mowing and the second bit (the "flattest portions of the front yard" mentioned above) was approximately six hours, evidenced by the changing shadows in the pictures above.
In the intervening hours, we worked on the bushes. I trimmed; he loaded the cuttings into the wheelbarrow.
When we started, the foliage was so dense that it blocked most of the light and all of the sky.
When we finished, nothing was really blocked. I worried as I cut back the branches that it might be too late for such work, that I might damage the bushes by doing this. In the end, I thought that that might, in fact, be a blessing.
In between the first and the second bushes -- lunch and a concert.
K and L spent most of the day inside, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Cleaning clothes, floors, bathrooms, and anything else that would sit still long enough. In the end, though, K had to come out: her garden beckoned.
"When will we ever have a relaxed Saturday?" K asked as we sat on the front steps watching the kids, who still had energy, play in the front yard.
"A relaxed Saturday? What's that?"
End of Spring 2018 Soccer
The Boy finished his second season of soccer. It was a successful season, no doubt. Talking to the coach during Monday's practice, I heard the kind of praise about one's child that parents dream of. "He's really got something," he said. "He plays thoughtfully. He watches. He thinks. He doesn't just barge in. He waits for a moment." This jives with E's own description of his strategy: "I just run around the edge [of the pack of children all trying to gain access to the ball] and wait for a good moment."
(Click on the images for a larger view.)
After the game, spring planting. The Girl decided she wanted to help. Wanted to drive the stakes that will hold our simple borders in place. Wanted to rake the soil one last time. Wanted to put the young plants in the ground.
(Click on the images for a larger view.)
The Boy, just having woken up from a nap, had to fight for his right to drive a few stakes in...
Soccer and the New Garden
Every kid needs a break-out game, a moment when he shines like a professional player who hits the grand slam in the bottom of the ninth to overcome a three-run deficit or scores the winning goal in overtime. E had his today. The first half was relatively calm. No score, no real threats. The big scorer from a couple of weeks ago couldn't work his magic, and although E's team kept the ball in the opponent's half of the field most of the time, they'd been unable to convert anything to a goal.
In the beginning of the third quarter (little kids' soccer is divided into quarters, not halves), E broke out of the pack of kids that always hovers around the ball, drove down half the field, and scored. All the parents were cheering for him as he broke through, and I sat thinking, "Please, let him make this. It could change everything." It wasn't that I was thinking about winning the game. I just knew that such a spectacular play could really boost his confidence. Shortly after that, he did it again. High fives from everyone. A big smile from the Boy.
During the fourth quarter, the Boy initially sat. He was not at all upset about it: he was panting, sweaty, and positively glowing. A few minutes into the quarter, though, one of the boys on E's team wandered off the field and decided he didn't want to play anymore.
"E!" the coach called out. We found him practicing in the area by the field and sent him back in. "Come on, superstar," said our tough-love coach.
The fourth quarter saw a turnaround. Twice a player from the other team broke through; twice the Boy chased the opponent down and got in front of him/her to try to stop the goal; twice the opponent scored on the Boy. He'd been trying each time to get far enough ahead of the attacker to turn and defend like a goalie (we don't play with goalies at this level), and there was just not enough time for him to make the transition.
So instead of winning 2-0 it was a 2-2 tie. Perhaps that's better. The Boy was still the star and everyone went home happy.
No pictures, though, because I left the camera at home. "Ah, we have tons of pictures from this year," I mumbled as we walked out.
The rest of the day we spent at home. Tilling, raking, spreading manure, peat moss, and compost, tilling again. It was an exhausting but rewarding day.
After School Friday
I come home from school some Fridays, and I only want to do one thing: get the grading done for the weekend. Those Fridays are very few and infrequent. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I’ve done that. In fact, I’ve been leaving my weekend grading (articles of the week, anyway) at school to work through Monday and Tuesday.
Other Fridays, I come home and help K with the cleaning. She’s always trying to get the bathrooms done Friday afternoon because she has enough work in the house Saturday that any dint will help.
Sometimes, I come home to find everyone in the backyard. I make a cup of coffee and join them.
Today, I came home and mowed. With a soccer game tomorrow and plans to remake our garden, albeit, in a new location, I knew mowing might be tricky tomorrow, so I got the mower out while K made dinner, and much to my surprise, I got it all done before dinner. Well, the front yard, anyway.
After dinner, a quick trip to Home Depot to pick up a tiller to break the ground for our new garden. The Boy chatted up the sales clerk as he tried to show me how to operate the machine, and he was ready to load the thing himself until he heard how loud it was.
“Maybe I can get the first tilling done before we head to the game in the morning,” I’d said during dinner, but when the Boy and I got back and, with a bit of help from our neighbor, got the tiller unloaded, I decided, “Why wait?”
“Hey, E, want to do some tilling?”
He dropped what he was doing and ran for his work boots.
We walked up and down the stretch of lawn by our driveway — the sunniest place on our lot except for the front yard — several times, with a couple of breaks for the Boy to empty his boots.
Once we were all done, the Boy had one request, one simple desire: “Daddy, can I run in the dirt without shoes?”
And then he stepped on a rock…