Smoking ribs for Easter żurek and a visit to the tomb the Polish community made.
Good Friday 2018
around the house
First Spring Saturday
Not really. It's another month until spring according to the calendar, but this is South Carolina: it's been in the sixties and seventies all week, and the yard shows it: weeds everywhere.
K and her mother spoke over Skype while E ate breakfast. He was in the room the whole time because of complications with his electronics time -- he didn't have any today. We're trying a new motivation for sleeping through the night.
Afterward, it was soccer practice -- first practice for the spring. We requested the same coach as we had in the autumn, Coach Kevin, and when we arrived for practice, we saw that we weren't the only ones to request him. So the Boy jumped right in without the shyness that sometimes plagues him in new situations.
Throughout the day, he practiced tying his new shoes. He's become brand-conscious: he simply had to have Under Armor brand shoes. The price he had to pay? No velcro. He made some progress in the whole process through the week, but it's still a matter of, "Daddy, I'm in a hurry! Can you tie my shoe?"
Out with the Old
The day began as all Saturdays do: a conversation with Babcia via Skype. The Boy took to showing Babcia several cars, explaining their significance in halting Polish. Babcia speaks no English, and the Boy speaks no Russian, so he has to use Polish if he’s going to speak with Babcia, which he is really motivated to do. It’s a good way, then, to get him using the language.
I spent the morning working on class materials. I’ve decided to use Quizet to hit vocabulary really hard in the second semester to make up for negligence in the first quarter. I’ve always struggled teaching vocabulary, but I’ve discovered a few online tools sure to make my students’ life more interesting.
In the afternoon, we finally got to work on the new trampoline. The first step was to take the old one down. The plan was originally to try to pass it on to someone else via Craigslist: “Free trampoline! All you have to do is come and disassemble it and get it out of your yard!” But I saw how that would end up: it would sit there forever, looking stupid — two trampolines in the backyard = a decidedly redneck feel. So I borrowed our neighbors’ truck, and the Boy and I ripped the thing apart and hauled it to the dump. He was terribly excited at the prospect of throwing so many pieces of metal into the huge dumpsters at the local dump station, and he was just as frustrated to realize that we wouldn’t be tossing them down into the dumpster below us but up into the dumpster. Still, he tossed a few pieces out of the truck with loud clattering, attention-grabbing style.
Once it was gone, the backyard looked so huge. The fence we had installed for Clover closed everything in quite a bit, and there was a moment when I thought about the time years from now when we’ll finally get rid of the trampoline because the kids are too big for it or not interested in it or — gulp — gone, and I smiled at the thought, but only briefly. Who wants to wish away one’s life for such a silly thing?
The kids came down to help out with the assembly of the new trampoline, which took a lot longer than I really anticipated. We all pulled together, though, and got it done more or less as a family. K was in the house, cleaning and cooking most of the the time, but she came down from time to time to check on our progress, help us out with getting the net up, and take some pictures.
And play with the dog a bit. Which, truth be told, was its own form of help: Clover can be really needy when we’re outside but not playing with her. She wants attention. She craves attention. And when the Girl and I were fighting with the springs and canvas, figuring out how exactly the next support system worked, and keeping the Boy from wondering off with pieces and parts, a worrisome dog was just that.
We finaly got it all together and the expected happened: it began raining.
Still, a great day overall.
First Day Out
It's been cold here lately -- ridiculously cold for South Carolina. The majority of the nights over the last ten days have been below freezing, which is something here; a substantial number (a majority of that majority?) have been below 20 degrees. In Poland, nothing out of the ordinary; K and I are used to such things. Here? It's ridiculously cold.
Add to it the tragic fact that we've all taken turns getting sick over that same period of time and it's obvious why no one has done much of anything outside these last few days. The dog is the only exception: she doesn't really care. The rest of us have done our best to stay warm.
So when we all were home and it was 59 degrees this afternoon, there was only one thing to do.
The Boy and the Girl were happy to jump on the trampoline again. The new trampoline, which should actually have some bounce to it, is still in parts on the basement floor.
"Let's wait until it warms up," K encouraged. That was Christmas. It's still on the floor.
"Daddy! Today it's warmed up! Can you work on the trampoline?" was the refrain from both the kids, but I was too busy laughing with K as she jumped out of the swing like a teenager.
The dog was thrilled to have someone to play with her again. She's really such a gregarious dog. She'll play outside by herself for a while, but she's always happy to have a companion. And don't even think about doing something outside the newly fenced area: she'll stand at the fence and whimper like she's being abused.
Counting Costs
How much does it cost to have a puppy? There are the upfront costs -- the puppy itself, shots, sterilization, etc. There are the hidden costs -- a new fence, multiple harnesses to find the right one, etc. Then there are the destructive costs -- shoes chewed, furniture chewed, etc. We've been lucky in the latter, perhaps because we've been unlucky in the former two. We've managed to keep Clover from destroying much of anything of value. She's learned more or less to ignore shoes. More or less. She went through a gnawing on furniture legs phase, but that seems to have passed as well. However, there's a chair in the living room that she enjoys chewing the bottom of, which probably won't make it through her puppyhood.
So I guess we should be thankful...
(A random thought to keep my post-every-day-for-a-month goal going even though I'm not 100% and slept most of the day...)
Playing in the Leaves
It was a job the Boy wanted to do from yesterday morning.
"Now can we rake leaves?" he kept asking.
"No, first we're putting up Christmas lights."
He wandered off to play with a neighbor, to have a break inside, to ride his bike, but he came back occasionally to help out.
"Now are we going to rake leaves?" he asked after I finished with the last lights.
"No, now I have to mow."
"Why?"
Indeed. It's December. Why should I be mowing now? That's the reality of living in the south. I'll likely mow again before Christmas. The primary motivation was to take care of the leaves, but the grass was looking a bit unkept as well.
"Now are we going to rake leaves?"
"No, now we're going to Nana's and Papa's to help with their Christmas decorations and to have dinner."
So when we got back from Mass just after noon today, we started raking and blowing the leaves. After Scouts today, we finished up.
The Girl joined us, because what was the end goal of it all? Simple: a pile of leaves to play in.
Flood
Post-flood pictures from a month ago or so.
Three Babies
The three baby owls dropped by for a visit this evening, but it was too dark to get a decent shot.
Tomatoes
The tomatoes are really starting to take off just before we do. Blossoms everywhere. Pin-size to golf-ball-size green tomatoes here and there. This year, I’m doing the opposite of last year when I simply let them be. This year, I’m pruning, pruning, pruning. The manager of a local university’s sustainable organic gardening program told me I could do two things to get bigger, juicer tomatoes: snip the suckers mercilessly (which I’ve not been as successful with as I would like), and snip the stems so that they only have the first to leaves remaining. The former I’d heard of; the latter was new to me. He explained it this way: “Either you can have your vine spending substantial energy and nutrition growing stems and leaves, or you can have the putting that into the fruit.” He assured me that each stem only needs two, maybe three leaves. And so our vines look a little different this year.
Especially when the late sun hits them just right. (And of course Lightroom hits them just right.)
Two Concerts
The Girl sang in her school's talent show this morning. She sang "Dziś idę walczyć, Mamo!" which is a song about the Warsaw Uprising. She's been practicing it for weeks. I've found myself humming it as I walk down the corridor at school. E sings snippets of it every now and then. K sings it as she's working around the house. It's infected our whole family, but what a wonderful infection.
After dinner, we got another concert, a performance of a music that's thousands and thousands of years old, a music that both calms and excites.
The owls have nested in our neighbors' backyard, and they came down for a visit today. The would sing and hoot, caterwaul and even almost purr. It was hypnotic.
