around the house
We finally finished our last bit of Christmas un-decorating today. The lights came down from gutters and the Christmas tree got some Sawz-all attention.
Afterward, instead of destroying trees, the Boy decided he wanted to try climbing one -- a magnolia in the backyard that was just a little sapling when we bought the house.
And what better way to end this day off of school than with a little bonfire, burning the tree that was just in our living room.
When you make your bathroom look like this
you inevitably make your table look like this
and even your counter, significantly further away, look like this.
We had an online meeting tonight with a company that helps student-athletes navigate the challenge of getting an academic scholarship. It’s something that I have absolutely no firsthand knowledge and little to no general knowledge about. The question is, given the cost of the service (it’s not cheap by any stretch), just how much will this provide us in the long run. Its cost would certainly be justified if we ended up with major savings to L’s college costs through a scholarship to play volleyball. Yet if we just get nothing for it — no real offer, no real scholarship, no real hope — then it was obviously money poorly spent.
We had a teacher workday today, and the day concluded with a presentation from a therapist about trauma and its effects on learning. It basically boiled down to, “Don’t be a dick and compound these at-risk kids’ issues by taking everything personally and letting that trigger you into a power struggle that damages the relationship.” That’s laudable, and certainly a very basic best practice for classroom management, but it got me thinking about how much we never know about our students in a given moment: what taught a kid to react this way to this stimulus, what’s going on in the kid’s head at the moment, how we’re contributing to it, what other social forces, unseen and unknown, are contributing at that moment due to peer pressure and the idea of lost face — the whole miasmic mess we find ourselves in when an at-risk student is in full panic mode. Not an excuse for disregarding the processes we went over today. Far from it — a full admission to their basic necessity. Yet it still leaves me feeling a bit like Sisyphus.
One of our final renovations on our house will begin tomorrow: the guest bathroom will get a complete makeover.
Heaven knows it needs it. In a lot of ways, it was always the room most in need of renovation. Ugly subway tiles on the counter, some god-awful trim around the sink, old toilet — it was all awful.
Was?! It is awful. It has been awful for years. And tomorrow, we start renovating it all. Well, we’re not doing anything — we’re hiring our Polish friend who’s done so much already in our home.
This last unknown is finally known: when will we ever get that bathroom done…
More planting in the yard,
a new bookshelf for the Girl,
some re-decoration of the Boy’s room —
not our typical Sunday.
In many ways, a fairly typical Saturday: the sun came up from the back of the house, washing everything in a soft morning light.
The Boy played computer games immediately upon waking up — it’s his Saturday morning treat, and considering the fact that we have no kind of gaming console whatsoever (no Xbox, no Wii, no Playstation), it’s a little indulgance we allow.
K and I (though mainly K) talk to Babcia. We talk about important matters (the energy crisis in Europe) and not-so-important matters (I can’t even remember).
I go and look at our front yard, covered with new grass that’s several inches high, thinking that I might finally be able to mow it today.
And then I start my chores. First up — seal up all the cracks in the chimney that I found last week, one (or perhaps several) of which let in enough water to damage the drywall in our bedroom. A serious matter, to be sure, but since it rained for a week a while ago with no additional damage, we think (hope) it was a one-time mini-disaster. Still, it’s best to seal everything as best I can.
In the afternoon, I plant some new shrubs for K and finally mow that yard. It’s a tedious task: the ground is still wet, and if I’m not careful, I dig out a bit of grass and mud every time I turn the mower. Still, once it’s all done, it looks magnificant.
In the meantime, K and the Boy are repainting the ramp that leads to Papa’s room. (We still call it that — probably always will.)
We don’t really need the ramp anymore as Papa no longer needs it for his wheelchair, but what else are we going to do? It would be absurd to get rid of it.
While they’re at it, they go ahead and repaint the small decorative fence that predates our chainlink fence and looks a little weird but a little sweet, too.
A busy, productive day.
A good bit of the afternoon I spent on the ladder, trying to figure out how water is getting into the wall in our bedroom. It's against the chimney, so I assumed the water was leaking in through some crack somewhere.
"Some" crack is hardly the word. Once I'd cleaned off all the moss that was growing there, I saw we had multiple cracks through which water could easily seep.
In the evening, date night: sushi and a stroll around downtown. This weekend is Fall for Greenville, which meant the streets were packed. But it was a lovely, cozy evening nonetheless.
What we accomplished this weekend and what I have documentation for are two different things. I spent some time this afternoon scraping paint from the ramp that leads into Papa's room (it will likely always be Papa's room). When will we repaint it? Who knows. But I wanted to accomplish something today other than schoolwork.
