I'm doing something pretty dumb right now and taking a migraine pill that is going to make me feel like total crap for an hour or so while it is helping my stupid migraine feel better. I don't do hormones or weather changes well.
Here's what Nancy is obsessing about these days: Alzheimer's Disease. I'm terrified that I have Early Onset Alzheimer's. I'd love to have my doctor test me for the genetic markers. And I also don't want to look like a total freako hypochondriac!
Yes, I just read _Still Alice_, one of the most moving books I've read in a long, long time. In fact, I did something that I've never done before. I stayed up late finishing the book, and at 1:15 a.m., I turned it over, went to page 1, and started immediately reading it again. I wanted to look at those early signs and how she crafted the novel's flow, and it's just amazing. She is an incredibly gifted writer. And the book is kind of affirmatively terrifying.
I think the real root of my worry is that I don't know if my mother had some form of recognizable dementia with a name. It's one of those things where family denial and other health problems took the focus off this, and my mother's complete refusal to cooperate with any kind of diagnostics has left just a big question mark. She would repeat things, ask questions over and over, and her life was so simplified and tight that there wasn't much room for her to make noticeable mistakes. For the last 8 years or so of her life, her physical problems with weak arm muscles and post-polio syndrome left her unable to do the cooking. She didn't work outside the home or have volunteer responsibilities. My Dad was an accountant and paid the bills, especially as more bill-paying went online. And other issues could have clouded a diagnosis--possible depression (who wouldn't be depressed knowing they had a degenerative syndrome that was just going to leave them weaker and weaker and that there was little to nothing they could do about it?), not enough activity in her life. Nonetheless, I wondered then and I wonder now. And my recent spate of higher-profile forgetfulness that is remarkable to me has me a little rattled. So it's not quite that this book has made me panic like a medical student seeing herself in every pathology, but that I chose this book because it's a topic that has been on my mind.
I'm still not through Twilight. Every time I sit down to read it, I end up doing something else: wasting time on that time-wasting emetophobia forum, reading emails, reading something else, writing here, writing somewhere else. I meant to read for a few hours tonight, but I ended up doing all of the above. I don't know why.
Frances had her first gymnastics mock meet tonight. It was very exciting. She has so much work to do! She has missed quite a bit of practice in recent weeks because of the holidays falling such that Level 3's missed more than any other level and because she had ballet rehearsals and shows. Wednesday at practice she looked so inattentive and clueless and I felt like her coach wasn't doing much correcting, and I got worried that she had hit her ceiling--she was no longer a promising gymnast, but had reached the level where she would max out. I was concerned that they had given up on her and had accepted that she was going to be left behind when her class moves up over the summer, so the coaches had stopped actively working with her. As a reality check, and rather than wallow in our speculation, we talked with her coach. I guess we were a bit off. The news was the same as always. Yes, Frances is inattentive. Yes, Frances will get more mature with time. But they still are saying that she is the most talented athlete they've seen come through their doors in quite some time and that she has incredible potential for this sport. I suppose if only we could get her to actually care about putting some effort and concentration into it some day!
In the meet, she got lost a bit in some of her longer routines. But overall, she looked competent, especially on bars and vault, her best events. I have videos that I'll try to upload and post tomorrow. Now she is at a birthday slumber party for one of her best friends. Add in that we went to Inflation Nation today, and it was a banner day altogether.
The boys are also gone. They left for the river house with Marty and Peter this afternoon and probably won't be back until Sunday. They left with nothing more than the shirts on their backs, so it will be a minimalist weekend for them. I would say it's almost lonely with only Rutledge here, but I'm enjoying the silence (especially with the migraine...).
Ollie and I finished listening to _Belle Prater's Boy_ on CD--it's been our car book for about a week. It was really good, and Ollie enjoyed it because it dealt with some darker themes: death of a parent, suicide, an unsolved mystery. It went above Walter's emotional head, which is fine. I'm still always testing my character-age theory, and the characters in this book were 12, which is older than my listeners, so I really still feel that yeah, two more years and this would have been an even more effective book, and 2 more years and it might be of interest to Walter. We are also nearly finished with _The Secret of Laurel Oaks_ as a read-aloud. It's been a somewhat long book, but very interesting. It's based very closely on the story of one of the most haunted houses in America, but the names have been changed, and more characters added. It's a ghost/horror type story set in Louisiana in a mansion where a mother and her two daughters were poisoned, seemingly by one of their slaves, but we're not sure yet which one (or if any) did it or exactly why. This is also a book that really is aimed more at young adults, and as such, there are some themes that are either a little too mature for my kids as readers and that would simply be better understood and appreciated by young adults, which is really who this novel is aimed at (it should be shelved in YA and not Juvenile, as it was). The book alternates between chapters happening in the present with the family staying at this mansion while their parents are at an academic conference and 160 backs, when a wealthy family lived there with their slaves. The owner of the house routinely raped/molested the one young slave girl, and this would be my primary reservation about recommending this book to tweens--at best, they might not even understand the language and get what's going on, but at worst, it could be disturbing. And the plot does hinge a bit on this fact. Ollie is enjoying the history wrapped into the mystery story as well as the eeriness of the voodoo and ghosts.
New audio-book: _Ella Enchanted_. Next read-aloud: _All the Way Home_ by Patricia Riley Giff. My next book for myself: _Riding in Cars with Boys_.
We're also plugging away at _History of Us_ at about 2 chapters a day right now. I'd like to get closer to the Civil War before they go to Pamplin, but I just don't see that happening. I'm going to just rest assured that they know quite a bit already and not fast-track our basic history sequence here. Right now we're on the presidency of John Adams, the Napoleanic Wars, and the birth of American political parties.
The new math book is on the way for Ollie. I'm starting to get a little itchy about him not being on track to finish Saxon 6/5 before the end of the year. At a lesson a day, Walter is going to be fine, and we'll make a decision about what comes next after that. But for Ollie, he'd have to double up some or continue a bit into the summer, something I don't see happening. I should just let it go--we homeschool so that we can work at our own pace and not have to feel "accelerated" or be somewhere arbitrary because of the calendar or rest of the class. But there's something about finished up a year's work all tidy-like that just plain appeals to me.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Curtain!
It's over. Another Poinsettia season. Our second, but probably not our last, at least I hope not.
We all have a big decision on our plates. Frances has indicated, when we asked, that she would prefer to drop out of gymnastics and do unlimited dance classes. This would mean that she could take ballet and flamenco, ballroom and capoiera, Zumba and yoga. There are so many possibilities! And it's not that far, and it costs less. Not quite as bloody as gymnastics, at least I don't think (her one dance instructor now, who also was a gymnast and a coach, describes gymnastics as a "bloody, brutal sport" where "the only thing sparkly about it is the leotard."). Simplified. But me, the mother, the one who isn't the one on the mats, is not ready to let go. I know, it seems like a no brainer. Cheaper. More time-efficient. She unequivocably wants dance. But what about the wisdom of staying with something for an extended period? What about the possible things she hasn't explored yet? What is she is losing some big opportunity to shine in something that is perfect for someone with her body shape and size? What if I'm pushing her too much because of my own "issues?"
Kerry's parents came up today to see the show, and her friend Lainey was there, too. It was all very exciting. Frances lives in the moment, and she's the type of person who savors every minute of it and wants to repeat it forever. She kept saying that she wants them to perform this show every day, seemingly indefinitely. I'm not so sure about that for the long term, but this is an outstanding outlet for someone with Frances's energy level. When she was in NC for the school performance, when the one hour show was over, she asked the director, "Is that all? But I didn't even sweat!" And that's the motto of Frances.
We all have a big decision on our plates. Frances has indicated, when we asked, that she would prefer to drop out of gymnastics and do unlimited dance classes. This would mean that she could take ballet and flamenco, ballroom and capoiera, Zumba and yoga. There are so many possibilities! And it's not that far, and it costs less. Not quite as bloody as gymnastics, at least I don't think (her one dance instructor now, who also was a gymnast and a coach, describes gymnastics as a "bloody, brutal sport" where "the only thing sparkly about it is the leotard."). Simplified. But me, the mother, the one who isn't the one on the mats, is not ready to let go. I know, it seems like a no brainer. Cheaper. More time-efficient. She unequivocably wants dance. But what about the wisdom of staying with something for an extended period? What about the possible things she hasn't explored yet? What is she is losing some big opportunity to shine in something that is perfect for someone with her body shape and size? What if I'm pushing her too much because of my own "issues?"
Kerry's parents came up today to see the show, and her friend Lainey was there, too. It was all very exciting. Frances lives in the moment, and she's the type of person who savors every minute of it and wants to repeat it forever. She kept saying that she wants them to perform this show every day, seemingly indefinitely. I'm not so sure about that for the long term, but this is an outstanding outlet for someone with Frances's energy level. When she was in NC for the school performance, when the one hour show was over, she asked the director, "Is that all? But I didn't even sweat!" And that's the motto of Frances.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Another picture-less post, I think.
Today was the big day, the Virgin Mary day. I had the Virgin's eye view of everything, including pounding feet dangerously close to me and my Jesus and whose underwear was peeking out of their leotards as they were rolling across the floor in costume. It was an amazing experience, though. The house was packed for the sold-out performance, and the show this year is phenomenal. I'm not saying this because my daughter believes herself to be the star of this show or because of my own divinity in it--it's a mind-blowing, expectation-exceeding celebration of the power of dance. I exaggerate very little when I say that when you see this show, you will laugh, you'll cry, you'll find yourself bopping in your seat and reassessing whether you're too old to take up salsa or ballet or jazz. You will sing Andrea Bocelli for weeks. The Company there makes dance look both breathtakingly athletic (a fact that I'll admit has often been lost on me in other dance performances I've seen...) and accessibly doable. This is just really accessible dance...it draws you in. I wish I could spread this gospel to everyone I know!
Melia, who was Jesus, is 6 months old, and Oh My Jesus, was it divine to hold a baby for almost two hours! She was perfect for the first act--googly and gurgly and captivated by the lights and activity in front of her, if a bit, um, sweetly popcorn smelling with her breastfed-baby poop in her diaper. She spent most of the time fooling around with a small spoon with a purple rubbery cover over the bowl and at our most visible moment, waving around a Tweety-Bird rattle, something I doubt the original Jesus did. But I think this is okay, since yesterday's Mary was chewing gum through the show. The job of the Virgin Mary in this show is to sit. People dance raucously in front of her (making it a very real question whether Mary is permitted to kind of rock out with them, since it's hard to not feel the beat, or whether Mary is supposed to behave as if in a stable in Bethlehem 2,008 years ago). She could make eye contact with the audience at times. She could peek toward the wings to see if the baby's father was still there. She could gaze in love for 2 hours at her baby, which is truthfully what I'd be doing if I just gave birth to this 6 month old in my arms.... I did a combination, sometimes bopping a bit to the music, sometimes watching the dancers and smiling, gently stroking the head of my baby, and trying to keep my "newborn" quiet and calm. Melia, for her part, let out some happy shrieks, cried a little and had to be replaced with a fake baby for 30 minutes before being returned to me as a "gift" from one of the members of the procession, and then was able to take her bow in the front of all of the other performers. I don't think she questioned too much where her attention should have been up there.
A Frances-ism:
* (we're driving in the car, just the two of us) "How do you think that God was created?" I try to craft some answer, taking into account that maybe she's not looking for deep theology or wanting something too complicated, about how He just kind of "Was", he wasn't created. And she interrupted saying, "You know what I think? I think it was probably like in Barbie Mariposa, when there's this sprinkling of all this glitter and swirling sparkles and then there was the fairy. I think that's the way God was created."
We ate the grossest gummi soda bottles today. Absolutely foul. Who comes up with this stuff?! On the plus side, I had a real moment of pride in Frances. I was at the self checkout and couldn't find the scan code for bulk candy on the computer there, so I asked Frances to run over to where the candy bins were and see if she could find a four-digit number on them and tell it to me. I expected nothing. Truly. And she did it! It bothers Walter and Ollie to no end that she still basically gets to unschool, but here's some proof that maturation happens all by itself.
Ollie and Walter both read their book club books for this month, Key to the Kingdom by Garth Nix. I don't like the name Garth Nix--it sounds like the name of an author that would just not appeal to me, and I know that probably the only thing worse than judging a book by its cover is judging a book by its author's name (whose last name is Nix, though?). But they both seemed to like the book. And I'm proud of them for reading it with some pressure in 2.5 days, when I know it wasn't a book that they were originally very excited about. Before that, Ollie had just finished _The Ghost's Grave_ by Peg Kehret and two days before that, _The Prince and the Pauper_, a book that he seems to have absolutely loved. Funny comment: "I think that Mark Twain is a really good author and everyone should read books by him." It must have been the way that he said it that struck me as funny, because it had a tone that suggested he didn't know that yes, this is a wildly popular writer and has been for a little while.... Tonight I started reading _Red Badge of Courage_ aloud. We had listened to it on CD a little while back, and they didn't want to finish it, even though it's pretty short. But they're getting into the Great Illustrated Classics version. It's a timely choice because they are going to Pamplin Historical Park at the end of the month for a program on the Civil War. I'm wondering how it's going to compare to Gary Paulsen's Civil War book for Ollie--also on the mixed feelings of a very young person who finds himself in a tough and frightening circumstance. Independently, Ollie is rereading the Book of Three. I'm not much of a re-reader myself, but both Ollie and Walter do quite a lot of it. Chalk it up as many different kinds of readers, I suppose. Walter's still on his Great Illustrated Classics binge--6 new ones for Christmas.
Final thoughts on New Years' Resolution: No need to achieve all of them (or start to do it) on January 1st. It's fine to start working on a resolution at any point, right?! So mine is to curb, if not end, what I refer to as "spillover." That unpleasant phenomenon that you are probably familiar with if you've read this blog over the past few months: where the vessel that is my brain and schedule-manager simply overfills and starts pouring stuff out of the top. I don't feel, like many do, that the hole is out the bottom. It honestly feels to me like responsibilities just can no longer fit and off they go. So anyway, I intend to wear a watch, to carry my calendar constantly, consolidate to simply one calendar and not a print one, one on the computer, and "I'll check in my email when I need a reminder", and never, never succumb to that uniquely non-employed occurrence of totally losing track of what day of the week it is. Commit to less. Prioritize more. Ask questions when I have them. Hide it better if I screw up. Carry more in my car at all times to hedge. And did I mention obsessing about my physical calendar more? Add this to my "No Fines in 2009" library resolution, and it just may be a Whole New Nancy!
Today was the big day, the Virgin Mary day. I had the Virgin's eye view of everything, including pounding feet dangerously close to me and my Jesus and whose underwear was peeking out of their leotards as they were rolling across the floor in costume. It was an amazing experience, though. The house was packed for the sold-out performance, and the show this year is phenomenal. I'm not saying this because my daughter believes herself to be the star of this show or because of my own divinity in it--it's a mind-blowing, expectation-exceeding celebration of the power of dance. I exaggerate very little when I say that when you see this show, you will laugh, you'll cry, you'll find yourself bopping in your seat and reassessing whether you're too old to take up salsa or ballet or jazz. You will sing Andrea Bocelli for weeks. The Company there makes dance look both breathtakingly athletic (a fact that I'll admit has often been lost on me in other dance performances I've seen...) and accessibly doable. This is just really accessible dance...it draws you in. I wish I could spread this gospel to everyone I know!
Melia, who was Jesus, is 6 months old, and Oh My Jesus, was it divine to hold a baby for almost two hours! She was perfect for the first act--googly and gurgly and captivated by the lights and activity in front of her, if a bit, um, sweetly popcorn smelling with her breastfed-baby poop in her diaper. She spent most of the time fooling around with a small spoon with a purple rubbery cover over the bowl and at our most visible moment, waving around a Tweety-Bird rattle, something I doubt the original Jesus did. But I think this is okay, since yesterday's Mary was chewing gum through the show. The job of the Virgin Mary in this show is to sit. People dance raucously in front of her (making it a very real question whether Mary is permitted to kind of rock out with them, since it's hard to not feel the beat, or whether Mary is supposed to behave as if in a stable in Bethlehem 2,008 years ago). She could make eye contact with the audience at times. She could peek toward the wings to see if the baby's father was still there. She could gaze in love for 2 hours at her baby, which is truthfully what I'd be doing if I just gave birth to this 6 month old in my arms.... I did a combination, sometimes bopping a bit to the music, sometimes watching the dancers and smiling, gently stroking the head of my baby, and trying to keep my "newborn" quiet and calm. Melia, for her part, let out some happy shrieks, cried a little and had to be replaced with a fake baby for 30 minutes before being returned to me as a "gift" from one of the members of the procession, and then was able to take her bow in the front of all of the other performers. I don't think she questioned too much where her attention should have been up there.
A Frances-ism:
* (we're driving in the car, just the two of us) "How do you think that God was created?" I try to craft some answer, taking into account that maybe she's not looking for deep theology or wanting something too complicated, about how He just kind of "Was", he wasn't created. And she interrupted saying, "You know what I think? I think it was probably like in Barbie Mariposa, when there's this sprinkling of all this glitter and swirling sparkles and then there was the fairy. I think that's the way God was created."
We ate the grossest gummi soda bottles today. Absolutely foul. Who comes up with this stuff?! On the plus side, I had a real moment of pride in Frances. I was at the self checkout and couldn't find the scan code for bulk candy on the computer there, so I asked Frances to run over to where the candy bins were and see if she could find a four-digit number on them and tell it to me. I expected nothing. Truly. And she did it! It bothers Walter and Ollie to no end that she still basically gets to unschool, but here's some proof that maturation happens all by itself.
Ollie and Walter both read their book club books for this month, Key to the Kingdom by Garth Nix. I don't like the name Garth Nix--it sounds like the name of an author that would just not appeal to me, and I know that probably the only thing worse than judging a book by its cover is judging a book by its author's name (whose last name is Nix, though?). But they both seemed to like the book. And I'm proud of them for reading it with some pressure in 2.5 days, when I know it wasn't a book that they were originally very excited about. Before that, Ollie had just finished _The Ghost's Grave_ by Peg Kehret and two days before that, _The Prince and the Pauper_, a book that he seems to have absolutely loved. Funny comment: "I think that Mark Twain is a really good author and everyone should read books by him." It must have been the way that he said it that struck me as funny, because it had a tone that suggested he didn't know that yes, this is a wildly popular writer and has been for a little while.... Tonight I started reading _Red Badge of Courage_ aloud. We had listened to it on CD a little while back, and they didn't want to finish it, even though it's pretty short. But they're getting into the Great Illustrated Classics version. It's a timely choice because they are going to Pamplin Historical Park at the end of the month for a program on the Civil War. I'm wondering how it's going to compare to Gary Paulsen's Civil War book for Ollie--also on the mixed feelings of a very young person who finds himself in a tough and frightening circumstance. Independently, Ollie is rereading the Book of Three. I'm not much of a re-reader myself, but both Ollie and Walter do quite a lot of it. Chalk it up as many different kinds of readers, I suppose. Walter's still on his Great Illustrated Classics binge--6 new ones for Christmas.
Final thoughts on New Years' Resolution: No need to achieve all of them (or start to do it) on January 1st. It's fine to start working on a resolution at any point, right?! So mine is to curb, if not end, what I refer to as "spillover." That unpleasant phenomenon that you are probably familiar with if you've read this blog over the past few months: where the vessel that is my brain and schedule-manager simply overfills and starts pouring stuff out of the top. I don't feel, like many do, that the hole is out the bottom. It honestly feels to me like responsibilities just can no longer fit and off they go. So anyway, I intend to wear a watch, to carry my calendar constantly, consolidate to simply one calendar and not a print one, one on the computer, and "I'll check in my email when I need a reminder", and never, never succumb to that uniquely non-employed occurrence of totally losing track of what day of the week it is. Commit to less. Prioritize more. Ask questions when I have them. Hide it better if I screw up. Carry more in my car at all times to hedge. And did I mention obsessing about my physical calendar more? Add this to my "No Fines in 2009" library resolution, and it just may be a Whole New Nancy!
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
I am wiped out. It's the middle of Poinsettia week, and it leaves little room for anything else. Tonight's rehearsal was incredible and was over in a timely fashion. I forgot to check to see if I needed to be the Virgin Mary tonight, so I wasn't. I was an audience member. There was also a photo shoot for Richmond Parent magazine, so Frances was able to have her diva moment.
The new computer came today, so I'm really excited to check it out more tomorrow. And we're way behind on our book club book for Friday, so I better hone my whip-cracking skills. Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix is the book. They're about halfway through in 1.5 days. It's pretty thick. They aren't necessarily as happy with it as they would be reading it at more of a self-chosen pace, but I dropped the ball and didn't realize that oh, this Friday is the meeting, not next. I've had a big problem with that since the break!
Ollie and I read half of a book called _It Happened In the White House_, which is about pets, children, weird events, ghosts, burnings, repairs, renovations, and all sorts of other things that have happened to Presidents and their families while living in the White House. I figure it's a good inauguration countdown read, not to mention how much this thing has cost me in fines because I didn't renew it three weeks ago. So we darn well better read it!
The new computer came today, so I'm really excited to check it out more tomorrow. And we're way behind on our book club book for Friday, so I better hone my whip-cracking skills. Keys to the Kingdom by Garth Nix is the book. They're about halfway through in 1.5 days. It's pretty thick. They aren't necessarily as happy with it as they would be reading it at more of a self-chosen pace, but I dropped the ball and didn't realize that oh, this Friday is the meeting, not next. I've had a big problem with that since the break!
Ollie and I read half of a book called _It Happened In the White House_, which is about pets, children, weird events, ghosts, burnings, repairs, renovations, and all sorts of other things that have happened to Presidents and their families while living in the White House. I figure it's a good inauguration countdown read, not to mention how much this thing has cost me in fines because I didn't renew it three weeks ago. So we darn well better read it!
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse...Kerry and Ollie came home today with a headset to play PS3 Live with. And it's free. Right now, Ollie is talking with God knows who from South Carolina while they are blowing apart a bunch of Germans. Ollie claims to be the unit's best sniper, but I'm not hearing confirmation. And now and then, someone he's playing with will say something like, "Man, this dude never stops talking, does he!" I can see that not only will our life never be the same again, but I may never see my family again....
Walter has reached level 66 or something like that on Runescape today. I worry that older kids are on there picking on him, since they still seem to call him a "Noob" all the time, even though he's been playing for months. He claims they aren't, although a band of Level 118s were ganging up on him earlier. When I wonder who Ollie is talking to on Call of Duty (right now he's yelling, "I definitely killed more than zero people!!! I know I killed more than zero people!--words I never thought I'd hear when I held that sweet tiny baby in my arms 10 years ago...), I just have to tell myself that Walter has over a hundred "friends" on Runescape. I just hope that they are constantly being vigilant not to give out any identifying information.
Christmas is officially put away. The tree is hauled off, the wreaths are in the attic, the lights are all out of the yard. Our yard is raked--for the first time this season--and the dead mole is out of the driveway. The house actually looks pretty cute, if I do say so myself.
Bye bye, tree.
I am off to read me some Twilight. I'm entranced. It has been a long time since I've read something that completely sucked me in to a point where I couldn't put it down to go to bed because I was absorbed in its world and couldn't wait for the next turn in what was happening. It's a pretty amazing book.
Walter has reached level 66 or something like that on Runescape today. I worry that older kids are on there picking on him, since they still seem to call him a "Noob" all the time, even though he's been playing for months. He claims they aren't, although a band of Level 118s were ganging up on him earlier. When I wonder who Ollie is talking to on Call of Duty (right now he's yelling, "I definitely killed more than zero people!!! I know I killed more than zero people!--words I never thought I'd hear when I held that sweet tiny baby in my arms 10 years ago...), I just have to tell myself that Walter has over a hundred "friends" on Runescape. I just hope that they are constantly being vigilant not to give out any identifying information.
Christmas is officially put away. The tree is hauled off, the wreaths are in the attic, the lights are all out of the yard. Our yard is raked--for the first time this season--and the dead mole is out of the driveway. The house actually looks pretty cute, if I do say so myself.
Bye bye, tree.I am off to read me some Twilight. I'm entranced. It has been a long time since I've read something that completely sucked me in to a point where I couldn't put it down to go to bed because I was absorbed in its world and couldn't wait for the next turn in what was happening. It's a pretty amazing book.
Friday, January 2, 2009
This is the Final Weekend!
We have this local furniture store, Haynes, where it is always The Final Weekend. Everything will be reduced! You will never see prices like this again! This is the Final Weekend!
Well, right now this is the final day of our holiday break. It doesn't mean absolutely everything in the grand scheme of our somewhat relaxed life, but it does feel like the end of the time that I had hoped to make the most of with our family--playing board games, making crafts, watching favorite movies, etc.
It's been mostly good. We did a lot of that, just not enough. And it really isn't as if Kerry will never have time in the evenings or we won't have some free time. But it is going to get hairy for a little bit here. It just hit me that this coming week is the hell week for Legend of the Poinsettia rehearsals. And it's also the week of prep for Frances's first mock gymnastics meet, which is unfortunate since she'll be missing a lot of gymnastics this week! I was planning to let her just show up late to these rehearsals up until the dress rehearsal, but now she has an opportunity to be in a photo shoot for either the local Richmond Parent magazine or the national Parents magazine (I was unsure which one was meant), and I know she'd get such a kick out of that. So we're back in high gear right away, then off into mock meet season for gymnastics, spelling bees, and field trips.
Last night was just the kind of night I dreamed this entire break would be. The boys and I taught Frances to play Uno (she won her second game, which was a huge boost!) and Blokus (which she taught to her friend Claire today), and then we played a round of Sight Word Bingo, a current favorite. My goal is to play a round or two of this Bingo every day, and hopefully those words will start to sink in. Then the boys and Kerry and I played a harsh game of Monopoly. In the interest of having the game end in a timely fashion, seeing as we started at 9 p.m., we all made some rather liberal trades, but Walter won, probably for the first time ever, and he won in a huge landslide. Ollie's heyday as the reigning champion is over, and it has been humbling for him. He thought he was invincible (or that we would never catch on to his cheating...).
And speaking of Ollie...poor Ollie in some ways. I've seen a lot of him over this break. This is the kid with no friends. I don't really know what to do about it other than to hope that he'll have more opportunities in the future to attempt to keep a new friendship or to learn constructively from his mistakes. He just does a lot of this, um, constructive learning, and it's kind of been the story of his life. One of these days, the body of knowledge he supposedly should have built by his so-called trials and definite errors will perhaps serve him well. Or maybe boys just don't have friends. It's hard to tell. And what's funny is that it's Walter who I always think of as the AS tending one, the one who has some deficits in social reading and functioning. He's off now with the Starks, after having spent the morning on Runescape with his cousins in Florida and his friends here (he supposedly has a Runescape friend list of over 100, whatever that means).
Right now I'm putting some audio CDs onto my computer to tranfer to the iPod, since the Henrico County ones are due tomorrow and today I have some free time on my hands to return them. We never did finish the last two CDs of Eragon, even though Ollie at one point described this as "his second favorite book ever." Hmmm...he loved it so much he didn't care what happened in the last 50 pages! We also have two CDs left of 11 with the Mysterious Benedict Society, a book I would best describe as "Not all that." I was mildly hooked on CD 1, and by the time we got to the middle of CD 2 I was struggling to pay attention to a story that was pretty flat. I don't think Ollie cares too much, either. Why do books have to be so freaking long? This is coming from someone whose PhD focus was very heavy on Charles Dickens and other novels of, well, Victorian length. But books, especially these variants-on-a-theme children's fantasy adventure novels with a "special" protagonist (the child who doesn't realize he's a secret agent/brilliant genius/mythological character/dragon rider-tamer-owner/genie/wizard), would do well to cut their length to about half of their current average. When I read them...IF I read them...I hear a commentary in my own head of blah, blah, blah as they go on and on with description or scenes that are just plain boring. This isn't my genre, but geez, I love books that are tight and full and keep you wanting more but also feeling a sense of accomplishment. Is it too much to ask? This Mysterious Benedict Society book might well have been a success with us if it had kept itself to, say, 5 or 6 CDs at most or 280 pages.
My resolutions for this year:
1. Lose my temper less. Live each day more as if I'm privileged to have been given the children that are here with e.
2. Find a better system for getting my library books back on time. Have I mentioned that I love Henrico, which emails me a few days before books are due to let me know that my time is just about up? In contrast to Chesterfield, which emails me a week or two later to let me know how naughty I was. My motto: "Fewer Fines in 2009!"
3. Find more time in my days for what I most want to do. I think regular people call this Prioritizing. I am finding myself thinking, "Well, now how in the hell do other people find the time to read 2100 pages of vampire books?" And the answer is probably something like: If I spent less time blogging or less time playing Yahtzee or less time on the phone or less time watching History Channel, then I'd suddenly find I had that time for 2100 page vampire trilogies. Or maybe that's no where I want to spend my time after all. But I want to feel a better sense of time usage and honesty with myself about what I'd rather be doing with the 24 hours I've been given in each day.
4. Find contentment where I am. I'm always looking at moving or revamping or whatever. I would like to be more goal-focused. What are my overall goals for my life now? And then hold these time-suck musings on moving across town or to a farm or to Roanoke or Boulder up to my touchstone and see how well they fare. If it's not in line with a clear mission statement, out it goes before whole days or weeks go by in fantasies, budget calculations, and market research.
5. Develop a higher sense of self esteem. I feel pretty useless lately, like I have no skills that anyone would really want. I know that isn't true, but I also can't seem to prove it, especially to myself. I feel qualified only to sit at home with my own children, being critical of how I'm even doing that. I want to feel like a competent person who has made life choices, and I want to feel that just because I don't have a good line on my resume from it right now that it's not a waste of my life or a waste of potential. I want to live my potential within the scheme I have currently chosen for myself.
6. More attention to the developing needs of Frances and Rutledge. It's so easy for me to think heavily about schoolwork for Walter and Ollie, but these two are so ready for higher interaction, if I could only find the time and energy. Today Rutledge was working in a maze book for the first time and he was awesome. He also used scissors for the first time, and he was enthralled for almost an hour cutting along lines in a Kumon book and assembling pictures he had cut out. Frances had a great reading session this morning and got all the way through The Foot Book on her own as well as nearing the end of Box 1 from Hooked on Phonics. I don't want to push her, but I dont' want to ignore her, either.
Finished today: _Shipwreck!_ by Gordon Korman. Great little read. We're eager for the second volume!
Finished the other day: _A Girl Called Eva_. Awesome WWII book. I hope to find more like it.
Well, right now this is the final day of our holiday break. It doesn't mean absolutely everything in the grand scheme of our somewhat relaxed life, but it does feel like the end of the time that I had hoped to make the most of with our family--playing board games, making crafts, watching favorite movies, etc.
It's been mostly good. We did a lot of that, just not enough. And it really isn't as if Kerry will never have time in the evenings or we won't have some free time. But it is going to get hairy for a little bit here. It just hit me that this coming week is the hell week for Legend of the Poinsettia rehearsals. And it's also the week of prep for Frances's first mock gymnastics meet, which is unfortunate since she'll be missing a lot of gymnastics this week! I was planning to let her just show up late to these rehearsals up until the dress rehearsal, but now she has an opportunity to be in a photo shoot for either the local Richmond Parent magazine or the national Parents magazine (I was unsure which one was meant), and I know she'd get such a kick out of that. So we're back in high gear right away, then off into mock meet season for gymnastics, spelling bees, and field trips.
Last night was just the kind of night I dreamed this entire break would be. The boys and I taught Frances to play Uno (she won her second game, which was a huge boost!) and Blokus (which she taught to her friend Claire today), and then we played a round of Sight Word Bingo, a current favorite. My goal is to play a round or two of this Bingo every day, and hopefully those words will start to sink in. Then the boys and Kerry and I played a harsh game of Monopoly. In the interest of having the game end in a timely fashion, seeing as we started at 9 p.m., we all made some rather liberal trades, but Walter won, probably for the first time ever, and he won in a huge landslide. Ollie's heyday as the reigning champion is over, and it has been humbling for him. He thought he was invincible (or that we would never catch on to his cheating...).
And speaking of Ollie...poor Ollie in some ways. I've seen a lot of him over this break. This is the kid with no friends. I don't really know what to do about it other than to hope that he'll have more opportunities in the future to attempt to keep a new friendship or to learn constructively from his mistakes. He just does a lot of this, um, constructive learning, and it's kind of been the story of his life. One of these days, the body of knowledge he supposedly should have built by his so-called trials and definite errors will perhaps serve him well. Or maybe boys just don't have friends. It's hard to tell. And what's funny is that it's Walter who I always think of as the AS tending one, the one who has some deficits in social reading and functioning. He's off now with the Starks, after having spent the morning on Runescape with his cousins in Florida and his friends here (he supposedly has a Runescape friend list of over 100, whatever that means).
Right now I'm putting some audio CDs onto my computer to tranfer to the iPod, since the Henrico County ones are due tomorrow and today I have some free time on my hands to return them. We never did finish the last two CDs of Eragon, even though Ollie at one point described this as "his second favorite book ever." Hmmm...he loved it so much he didn't care what happened in the last 50 pages! We also have two CDs left of 11 with the Mysterious Benedict Society, a book I would best describe as "Not all that." I was mildly hooked on CD 1, and by the time we got to the middle of CD 2 I was struggling to pay attention to a story that was pretty flat. I don't think Ollie cares too much, either. Why do books have to be so freaking long? This is coming from someone whose PhD focus was very heavy on Charles Dickens and other novels of, well, Victorian length. But books, especially these variants-on-a-theme children's fantasy adventure novels with a "special" protagonist (the child who doesn't realize he's a secret agent/brilliant genius/mythological character/dragon rider-tamer-owner/genie/wizard), would do well to cut their length to about half of their current average. When I read them...IF I read them...I hear a commentary in my own head of blah, blah, blah as they go on and on with description or scenes that are just plain boring. This isn't my genre, but geez, I love books that are tight and full and keep you wanting more but also feeling a sense of accomplishment. Is it too much to ask? This Mysterious Benedict Society book might well have been a success with us if it had kept itself to, say, 5 or 6 CDs at most or 280 pages.
My resolutions for this year:
1. Lose my temper less. Live each day more as if I'm privileged to have been given the children that are here with e.
2. Find a better system for getting my library books back on time. Have I mentioned that I love Henrico, which emails me a few days before books are due to let me know that my time is just about up? In contrast to Chesterfield, which emails me a week or two later to let me know how naughty I was. My motto: "Fewer Fines in 2009!"
3. Find more time in my days for what I most want to do. I think regular people call this Prioritizing. I am finding myself thinking, "Well, now how in the hell do other people find the time to read 2100 pages of vampire books?" And the answer is probably something like: If I spent less time blogging or less time playing Yahtzee or less time on the phone or less time watching History Channel, then I'd suddenly find I had that time for 2100 page vampire trilogies. Or maybe that's no where I want to spend my time after all. But I want to feel a better sense of time usage and honesty with myself about what I'd rather be doing with the 24 hours I've been given in each day.
4. Find contentment where I am. I'm always looking at moving or revamping or whatever. I would like to be more goal-focused. What are my overall goals for my life now? And then hold these time-suck musings on moving across town or to a farm or to Roanoke or Boulder up to my touchstone and see how well they fare. If it's not in line with a clear mission statement, out it goes before whole days or weeks go by in fantasies, budget calculations, and market research.
5. Develop a higher sense of self esteem. I feel pretty useless lately, like I have no skills that anyone would really want. I know that isn't true, but I also can't seem to prove it, especially to myself. I feel qualified only to sit at home with my own children, being critical of how I'm even doing that. I want to feel like a competent person who has made life choices, and I want to feel that just because I don't have a good line on my resume from it right now that it's not a waste of my life or a waste of potential. I want to live my potential within the scheme I have currently chosen for myself.
6. More attention to the developing needs of Frances and Rutledge. It's so easy for me to think heavily about schoolwork for Walter and Ollie, but these two are so ready for higher interaction, if I could only find the time and energy. Today Rutledge was working in a maze book for the first time and he was awesome. He also used scissors for the first time, and he was enthralled for almost an hour cutting along lines in a Kumon book and assembling pictures he had cut out. Frances had a great reading session this morning and got all the way through The Foot Book on her own as well as nearing the end of Box 1 from Hooked on Phonics. I don't want to push her, but I dont' want to ignore her, either.
Finished today: _Shipwreck!_ by Gordon Korman. Great little read. We're eager for the second volume!
Finished the other day: _A Girl Called Eva_. Awesome WWII book. I hope to find more like it.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
I am doomed for the New Year. I forgot to eat my blackeyed peas today. But I have to say, I don't think I've ever missed a year, and I've had some years that have just sucked to high heaven. Maybe it's time to tempt fate a little bit. Maybe I didn't eat them because I wasn't home, but I was just informed that they were at the party we went to this afternoon, so I have no excuse. As usual, my ADD self didn't notice half of what was served--I just took in the vague impression "lots of food."
I couldn't believe that Rutledge managed to stay up until midnight last night. That's not entirely correct, actually, He went to bed around 8, but then woke up again at 11:30 and came downstairs and watched the ball drop with us. Frances had all the best intentions of staying up, but she was down by 9. The rest of us worked on the four model rockets for the launch today, built half of an Erector "Battering Ram" carnival ride (with the nifty power-tool that came with our one set), played Blokus, and watched a marathon of shows on the History channel about Instruments of Torture. All in all, it was our traditional New Years Eve.
This morning we had to be up and functional too early to go to an annual model rocket launch. Last year our record for 2 for 2 in losing rockets. This year went much better. I think it portends well for our luck in the new year. The first rocket we launched was our "safe" rocket--the big shiny one that didn't claim high altitude. It had a lovely flight, then descended beautifully right into the top of a very, very tall tree, where it hung by its shock cord, taunting me for the rest of the morning. The second one was the pencil, and it also went up rather nicely. Then the nose cone completely separated from the body of the rocket, which came down without incident. The nose cone, however, carried aloft by a merciless wind, sailed off with its orange and yellow parachute over the trees, over the top of the Morningside Assisted Living facility, and into the great unknown. Three times...three times I picked through every piece of landscaping at Morningside, and I interviewed an elderly resident who was sitting outside and claimed to have seen no parachuting nose cones, but all to no avail. I must declare that rocket a loss. Our third rocket, which we dubbed "The Duct Tape Express" because it fell apart before it even started its flight, came down separated from its nose cone as well, but all was recovered. It went on to have two or three flights, but by the time all were done, its fragile build had suffered fatal wounds; it should not fly again. Our fourth, The Gnome, was extremely tiny and performed much better than expected. Alas, the greater Richmond area seems to be experiencing a model rocket engine shortage, especially of the smallest multi-stage A engines, so we only had an engine for one flight. It returned home ready to perform another day.
All in all, our record stands at 50% for today (25% if you count that the Hi Flier has made its final flight). Next year I predict a 75% success rate. I sense we're on a roll.
Lunch was spent with friends at their house. It was without incident. And I learned there what I will spend my B&N gift card on: the Twilight trilogy. I've never been a fan of vampire books, but non-vampire genre readers have insisted that it is a must-read they never would have suspected. And who would not be intrigued by LDS bloodsuckers? I can't wait to go out tomorrow morning to take care of this errand!
Immediately after, we headed to another New Year's party at another friend's house. This one was in Woodlake, and we met one of our newer neighbors and were able to swap stories about our favorite ill-spirited dog-walkers here. This couple is inexplicably hateful, and when they aren't actively pissing me off, I really do feel sorry for them because something awful must have happened in their life to make them so unpleasant and unable to just live and let live. They're the type of people who feel they must walk around with a notebook and take notes on all of the real and potential covenant violations at every house in the neighborhood, who scowl and refuse to say hello when you pass them, and who pointedly inform you as they go by that whatever you are doing is displeasing to them or not allowed. My children quake in their shoes when they see Mr. S. and his Westie. This party had more food than I think I've seen just about anywhere, and the kids had a great time running around outside in the freezing cold weather with their friends Jackson, Adam, Grant, and a collection of new faces. Frances had a whole girl posse to play with. And Rutledge was, as usual, loudly protesting the unfairness of being treated as if he was, well, three. The fellow gets absolutely no respect. He is a big boy (Sissy told him so!), and yet no one will let him have a fair turn with the Wii, no matter where he goes. We heard about that loud and clear, in a style that can only be described as Three-Year-Old-Up-Past-Midnight.
I am going to have to wait until tomorrow for any kind of cogent Year in Review kind of post or any serious resolution making. It has officially been 2009 for 24 hours now, and I am ready to spent the next ten hours or so sleeping!
I couldn't believe that Rutledge managed to stay up until midnight last night. That's not entirely correct, actually, He went to bed around 8, but then woke up again at 11:30 and came downstairs and watched the ball drop with us. Frances had all the best intentions of staying up, but she was down by 9. The rest of us worked on the four model rockets for the launch today, built half of an Erector "Battering Ram" carnival ride (with the nifty power-tool that came with our one set), played Blokus, and watched a marathon of shows on the History channel about Instruments of Torture. All in all, it was our traditional New Years Eve.
This morning we had to be up and functional too early to go to an annual model rocket launch. Last year our record for 2 for 2 in losing rockets. This year went much better. I think it portends well for our luck in the new year. The first rocket we launched was our "safe" rocket--the big shiny one that didn't claim high altitude. It had a lovely flight, then descended beautifully right into the top of a very, very tall tree, where it hung by its shock cord, taunting me for the rest of the morning. The second one was the pencil, and it also went up rather nicely. Then the nose cone completely separated from the body of the rocket, which came down without incident. The nose cone, however, carried aloft by a merciless wind, sailed off with its orange and yellow parachute over the trees, over the top of the Morningside Assisted Living facility, and into the great unknown. Three times...three times I picked through every piece of landscaping at Morningside, and I interviewed an elderly resident who was sitting outside and claimed to have seen no parachuting nose cones, but all to no avail. I must declare that rocket a loss. Our third rocket, which we dubbed "The Duct Tape Express" because it fell apart before it even started its flight, came down separated from its nose cone as well, but all was recovered. It went on to have two or three flights, but by the time all were done, its fragile build had suffered fatal wounds; it should not fly again. Our fourth, The Gnome, was extremely tiny and performed much better than expected. Alas, the greater Richmond area seems to be experiencing a model rocket engine shortage, especially of the smallest multi-stage A engines, so we only had an engine for one flight. It returned home ready to perform another day.
All in all, our record stands at 50% for today (25% if you count that the Hi Flier has made its final flight). Next year I predict a 75% success rate. I sense we're on a roll.
Lunch was spent with friends at their house. It was without incident. And I learned there what I will spend my B&N gift card on: the Twilight trilogy. I've never been a fan of vampire books, but non-vampire genre readers have insisted that it is a must-read they never would have suspected. And who would not be intrigued by LDS bloodsuckers? I can't wait to go out tomorrow morning to take care of this errand!
Immediately after, we headed to another New Year's party at another friend's house. This one was in Woodlake, and we met one of our newer neighbors and were able to swap stories about our favorite ill-spirited dog-walkers here. This couple is inexplicably hateful, and when they aren't actively pissing me off, I really do feel sorry for them because something awful must have happened in their life to make them so unpleasant and unable to just live and let live. They're the type of people who feel they must walk around with a notebook and take notes on all of the real and potential covenant violations at every house in the neighborhood, who scowl and refuse to say hello when you pass them, and who pointedly inform you as they go by that whatever you are doing is displeasing to them or not allowed. My children quake in their shoes when they see Mr. S. and his Westie. This party had more food than I think I've seen just about anywhere, and the kids had a great time running around outside in the freezing cold weather with their friends Jackson, Adam, Grant, and a collection of new faces. Frances had a whole girl posse to play with. And Rutledge was, as usual, loudly protesting the unfairness of being treated as if he was, well, three. The fellow gets absolutely no respect. He is a big boy (Sissy told him so!), and yet no one will let him have a fair turn with the Wii, no matter where he goes. We heard about that loud and clear, in a style that can only be described as Three-Year-Old-Up-Past-Midnight.
I am going to have to wait until tomorrow for any kind of cogent Year in Review kind of post or any serious resolution making. It has officially been 2009 for 24 hours now, and I am ready to spent the next ten hours or so sleeping!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
