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What They Deserve

Sunday 12 May 2019 | 0 Comments

Six years ago today, it was Mother’s Day, and we went to Conestee Park, probably our favorite park in the area. L was six, the same age as E now. As E and I do so often now, L and I were riding out bikes during this particular visit.

L is now twelve and snarky. Part of that is the age and part of it is environment: she comes by her sarcasm honestly. I teach her through example, when I’m sarcastic with her, when I’m sarcastic with K, when I’m sarcastic with drivers who can’t even hear me and wouldn’t care what I have to say even if they could. It’s one of those areas in parenting that I think I could have done a lot better.

The Boy is six and not snarky, but he tries on a bit of bravado every now and then because he learns it from his sister, who learns it from me.

Through it all, K has remained the steadfast example of patient and sarcasm-less parenting. Of the two of us, she’s the one I’d rather my children emulate. Of the two of us, she’s the one doing less to screw them up; in fact, she’s doing all she can to balance out what I’ve messed up. She is the wife I most often feel I don’t deserve and the mother I feel my kids most deserve.

Digging, Mowing, Sealing

Sunday 05 May 2019 | 0 Comments

We put the new bed in a year ago -- exactly a year ago today.

End of Spring 2018 Soccer

It's tempting to fall into the obvious reflection: the "so much has changed in a year" cliché. A lot has changed in a year, but the majority of it has changed in the last five months, all starting December 4 with a phone call at around 9:30 in the evening while I was out walking the dog. "Nana is going to the hospital." And from that moment, it all changed. No one knew just how much it would change, of course. No one has any real clairvoyance in medical emergencies. But here I am, a day past five months after it all started, exactly a year after we put them in, taking out the last vestiges of a garden.

It doesn't happen often, but every now and then, Saturday work spills into Sunday. We try to keep Sunday as a day for the family, but with the last five months begin what they have, that in itself is a challenge.

Today's job was simple but critical: deal with the recently created drainage issue at the front corner downspout.

Yesterday's mess before it got really bad

Visions of it seeping through the brick into the now newly created concrete-slab crawl that would offer no outlet at all haunted me, and when the rain woke me at three in the morning, I went to check and found the hack I'd created didn't work either and set about digging, in a downpour in my underwear and Crocs at three in the morning, a quick trench to direct the water away from the house.

Today, then, was the day to solve the problem once and for all. The first task: dig up the Crepe Myrtle at the corner of the house. That took a couple of hours. Then, the trenching, including a trench under the newly built ramp. Why not do it before they built the ramp? Simply -- I didn't know it would be necessary.

For now, everything is simply laid out and pushed together. I'm far from done and not even sure how I'll terminate it for effective discharge.

Next, after several hours of digging, I turned my attention back to the yard and the hedges three-quarters trimmed. I'd cut my power cord yesterday and decided to put it off until Sunday -- and the torrents of rain that were by then falling didn't do much to avoid said procrastination.

The Boy for his part was upset and thrilled about it all. Digging is one of his favorite things, and he was disappointed that he missed out on so much of it. Mowing, though, is equally enjoyable for him, and he reached a milestone today: he can now start the mower himself. He ran over the trimmings that remained around the yard, always looking for a reason to turn the mower's engine off so he could turn it back on.

(The hard rain really did a number on our plants -- they're beaten into submission.)

The final task was indoors: sealing up the entry to the new room. The floor guys are going to be here tomorrow, and the thought of sawdust throughout the kitchen and living room was none too appealing.

Crawling in from the back side before it was sealed: "This would make a great little fort..."

Finally, dinner without the girls: leftover soup and a salad. The Boy, being the wonderfully odd eater than he is, was disappointed with the soup (he's grown tired of all soups, I think) and thrilled about the salad.

Spring Monday

Monday 29 April 2019 | 0 Comments

I was worried that this would be the first of several very difficult days. With no one here to help with the kids (read: E) in the morning, it's difficult for me to get out of the house very early. This week, however, is my duty week: I get to spend thirty minutes before my contracted arrival time supervising kids on the eighth-grade hallway. It's loads of fun, but the downside is that I have to leave much earlier than usual. Which created a dilemma: what to do with the Boy. Two options: ride with the neighbor or leave without breakfast and have it at school.

At around 6:15 this morning, the Boy toddled downstairs, still rubbing his eyes, and presented a third option: "I'm just going to eat breakfast now."

"Are you sure? You could still sleep another half hour."

"Nah, I'll stay up."

And so the Boy proved once again that life is like calculus: there's often more than one (or even two) solutions to a given problem.

Once at school, the usually peaceful morning duty transformed temporarily into one of those moments when, as a teacher, I see a student's future and think, "Wow, if this kid doesn't make some serious changes, do some serious maturing, she's in for a long, tough life." And much of that, in most cases, is due to environment: they're not choosing necessarily to be a disrespectful kid. It's something that works on the streets and/or at home, and they just bring it into the school as well.

That particular exchange foreshadowed the discussion I was to have with my honors English kids, who read Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" last week as their article of the week. We began with a review via video:

Then the kids went through a few discussion questions:

To what extent do you find Socrates's point about the human tendency to confuse "shadows" with "reality" relevant today?
What could be the elements that prevent people from seeing the truth, or regarding "shadow" as the "truth"?
In society today or in your own life, what sorts of things shackle the mind?

The common theme that came through in all of these discussions was the role social media plays in creating false realities, in preventing people from seeing truth, in shackling the mind. It's ironic: I see so many of these kids buried in their phones before and after school, yet they're strangely aware of the negative effects.

After school, I hopped out of the car thinking, "So far, other than the little issue in the morning during hall duty, this supposedly tough day is surprisingly enjoyable. After dinner, it was even more so: one of E's choices in his literacy log is to find a pleasant place to sit outside and read for a while.

And after that, a little project: a bird house. Where did this idea come from? I don't know. The Boy simply talked K into buy him a piece of pressure-treated 1 x 6, and although he originally planned on building a tree house from that single plank, he was flexible enough to realize that a bird house was probably more in the scope of that single plank. So he found instructions on YouTube, gathered tools, and together we built a little bird house.

"Once you're done, I want to help with the painting," the Girl declared, and so with twenty minutes to go before the start of E's evening ritual, they began working.

"Let's decorate it with birds," the Girl suggested. They began drawing various silhouettes of birds while I got the dog's dinner ready, only to discover we were out of dog food.

"Alright kids, you'll have to do the actual painting tomorrow. E, you'll have to go with me to the store to buy some food for Clover." I was expecting a small fit, some protesting at the very least, and I was reluctant to stop the work in progress: it's so rare that they find something that really engages them both.

Still, the Boy was surprisingly mature. "Okay," was all he said, and off we went to get some kibble for the pup.

And so at the close of this surprisingly pleasant day that was supposed to be the first of several tough ones, I find myself realizing anew that "tough days" and "bad days" and "rough days" depend more on our perception than anything else, just like Plato's shadows suggest.

Friday

Friday 26 April 2019 | 0 Comments

A little flower planting and exploring after dinner. The Boy had to help.

"E, slow down! You're destroying the plant!" was K's common refrain -- a bit too eager in his help...

Photo Request

Tuesday 23 April 2019 | 0 Comments

The Girl uses K's Instagram account as a work-around for our reluctance to let her have one of her own. It works out the same, but we have a little sense of added security. Today, she asked me to take some pictures for her Instagram feed.

I don't think I'll ever understand that obsession kids these days have with posting photographs of themselves...

Spring Break 2019 Day 3

Wednesday 17 April 2019 | 0 Comments

Palm Sunday 2019

Sunday 14 April 2019 | 0 Comments

The day started with Mass -- sort of. I went to Mass at our usual church in order to photograph the Palm Sunday liturgy, the procession and all that. It's a lovely liturgy, and to be honest, I just enjoy photographing the Mass more than simply sitting through it.

I was alone because the rest of the family was planning on going to Polish Mass in the afternoon. Palm Sunday is always a Polish Mass day, and there's always a potluck and small get-together afterward. There's always a contests for the best babka, a contest for the most beautifully-decorated palm, and some performance or another.

Then again, get more than a couple of Poles together and you'll end up having one of two things: speeches or songs. Or perhaps you'll have both.

When the call went out for anyone who wanted to perform, it didn't take too much asking to get the Girl up to sing. She sang a verse from "Stabat Mater" -- in Latin. From memory.