Another beautiful day in the neighborhood

I realize the blog is woefully neglected. I just so rarely get online and even more rarely remember anything to say. It was far more an outlet for the insanity of life when I was cooped up at home all day with young kids I was attempting to homeschool. Life is still chaos now, but the chaos leaves the home.

So, in happy news my annual skin test for TB was negative. Totally surprised me since it was 'almost' positive last year and I got to see 2 people with active TB this year (yea!).   In other happy news we haven't lost the cat, yet. Although when we were at the vaccine clinic for it, Kayla wanted to trade it in for a turtle. I let it outside and then she cried that it was going to get eaten. I tell you, I can't win with her.

I'll start with her,  I guess. The excitement of the month is that her class is putting on a play. An propaganda rich "environmental play" wherein she is the "moderately good witch" who was demoted from good to moderately good because she recycled the tin man. I'll post pictures, it's next week. She does well at everything except deal with any emotion or adversity.  And she started writing notes to her teacher on her math scrap paper about "needing a break" for a certain boy in her class. I saw this and asked Kayla about it, she said the teacher already talked to her about it and told her to just yell at said boy when he's bothering her.
Yeah. That's really going to work. You do know that she's bothered by the fact that he breathes the same air in the room as her? Giving her permission to yell at others who annoy us is kinda the exact opposite of what we teach here. But, hey, your classroom, your rules. When you change your mind I'll understand. She still won't be permitted to screech like a banshee at her siblings when she has problems with them at home.

Sonia.... well.... I'm getting home "incomplete AGAIN!!!" underlined about 3 times with places for me, her parent to sign. Apparently if it's not something she's interested in or feels it's due or doesn't start when everyone else does but rather the 5 min before it's due.. it's not getting done. Am I surprised? not at all. This is actually the first teacher who thinks she should have her school work done when the rest of the class has it done.  As far as I know the homework is getting done, but again, I'm not signing anything or checking anything. I'm only signing the incomplete school work packets. No, I don't get it. Not even going to pretend to.

She did get to go to the "daddy daughter" dance at church this month. Cowboy theme. I have a picture somewhere. Larry got that evening off. Sonia was quite excited and happy. Although apparently Larry plays redneck a bit too well, because in talking to one of the other dads, he gave the impression that he drove tractors for a living. They didn't have much in common. Aside from having a 4th or 5th grade daughter.

Joey is the steady one of the bunch. Still has his quirks. But does well in school and sports. Finished up soccer season with a 0 win season. But he never got discouraged and the coaches did try.. it was not a well divided up age group. We were by far the youngest and smallest team. Our one "big" kid was the average size of the other teams, and when the other team kicks at about your own kid's head level it's hard to watch. But he managed to escape with all his teeth and no closed head injuries - so big win there!  He's moved up to being the kid primarily responsible for the chickens and gets paid for it. He likes getting paid.

Jon/JM seems to be able to drive me batty in nanoseconds. But still my most attached kid.  This week I was down with the stomach bug that took out most of our family for a night and Larry told him to leave me alone. When I surfaced for a drink you'd think he hadn't seen me for a year.  It's kinda weird. I probably overthink about it. Does great at sports. The joke being he's going to go to college on a sports scholarship. He was the highest scoring kid on his soccer team despite missing 3(or 4?) games and spending the last one on defense. He is doing well academically in school. I was there this week to volunteer in his class and noticed that the class is now down 4 kids from last month. Still waiting to see how this year is going to play out or if I'm going to pull him to homeschool or put him in a charter. The whole common core stuff is a little unsettled at this grade. While the whole revisionist history stuff is going on at older grades, JM's teacher said they need to raise the standards they are teaching to match common core. So I'm hearing California standards are the standards for a state with a 40+% ESL population and when/if we transfer to another state we're going to have to go back to hoping for a football scholarship? Whatever. This whole teaching propaganda for a standardized test has grown old.  I've got no problems with propaganda if it's something I agree with.. in this case.. uh....... no.

Work.. blah. I'm just a cog in the wheel there. And a pretty uncooperative one at that. I resent that my entire day is micromanaged by a half dozen people or more who want percentages of things addressed/clicked/immunized and quotas of people seen... sigh.   I was told  I needed "more training" on the new Nextgen system and that I needed to schedule that but nothing further on how to do that. Last month. I didn't know I needed more training, since I *thought* I was more or less doing it right. Apparently more less than more. But it's not like I see it as a priority. When I took those "what are your talents" surveys that sent my bleeding heart into nursing no where on there did it have a talent for computer savvy categorizing every person into a click box and churning through 4/hour. As I tell them, when I went into nursing it was BECAUSE it was a field you didn't have to stare at a computer all day. I had no desire to be a numbers crunching accountant or actuarial clerk. This EHR stuff stinks. Thank you, Government.

Well, it appears that my masses of yearning to be free masses expect me to feed them dinner. Except for the one in bed with the stomach bug.

Speaking of.. are my kids the only ones that seem to need to come to the kitchen/dining/living rooms to announce they feel sick followed a split second later by demonstrating? I swear it's impossible to get them to understand 'if you are going to throw up, please do so IN THE TOILET!" not the floor, dining room table while others are eating, etc.... Sigh.. hopefully we're on the last day or 2 of this. If not, I'm going to need more rug cleaner. And probably a stronger stomach.

October? Already?!

Time flies.

I know the second half of that is "when you're having fun" but frankly, here it seems to fly at a frantic pace if I'm having fun or not.

So.. let's see...

School started. We were there the first day. I love 3 of the 4 teachers this year. Again. Joey and Sonia are in a team teaching group, so Sonia's homeroom teacher teaches language arts to both of them and Joey's homeroom teacher teaches science and math to both. Yes. homeroom. They're in 5th grade. When did that happen?! And if I believe them about their homework, they're getting a whole lot less homework than they've had in previous years. Or they're not doing it because parents no longer sign anything in 5th grade. Last year if I didn't sign the 3 different places Joey would loose recess, this year.. nope.. nothing. we don't need parents anymore.

In a weird twilight zone sort of occurrence, Sonia's suddenly in advanced math because she tested out of the math book. I have yet to figure out how that happened. Last I checked we still were shaky on the basic math facts. But apparently she's suddenly got them down. In the switching classrooms with Joey, there are 3 or 4 sets of twins. The twins share desks. My twins argue almost daily that the other one moved their shared red pen or pencils. I've bought them extra red pens and pencils so they can have extras and not need to argue. It hasn't settled anything, so we're back to the 'they'll figure it out eventually' mentality.

Kayla will either cure cancer or drive me to an early grave. She's smart, personable and the one I fear most. This week, for example, she sat on hand sanitizer container causing her to have a wet spot on her pants. Joey and Sonia thought this was hysterical and teased that she pooped hand sanitizer. (we haven't outgrown potty humor, I'm not sure we ever will) This brings on an onslaught of tears.
"mom, they said I pooped sanitizer"
well, did you?
"no, but they said I did!"
well, if you didn't, why worry about it?
"because they said I did!"
so they think you're so clean that you poop sanitizer instead of poop, that means you're really clean. that's a compliment. 
(more tears, louder this time)
"no it isn't!"
why not?
"because that means I'm DIFFERENT!" (sobs hysterically)

So you can see that there might be reason for concern about getting her through her teen years. Elementary school right now is fraught with potential problems. But, hey, she tests well.

Jon/Jonathan/JM is another one that I'm pretty sure is payback of fate from any aggravation I caused parents and teachers in my past.  And the model for why I no longer feel qualified to give parenting advice on anything to anyone. Should you try to breastfeed? gee, at this point I'm not sure, I'm re-thinking everything I thought was the right parenting decisions..... maybe I should go vaccinate him a bunch more.. And of course of all the teachers, he got the "academic" one. Which I think it administrative speak for the mean one that yells alot and doesn't allow fun.  It's going just swell. I have this month to file my homeschool affidavit. I have it filled out and ready to go. I'd have to work out the work/childcare details. Apparently even if I'm working in pediatrics, I'm not supposed to bring my own pediatrics to work with me. 

I did. once night. I got an email that I had to code 2 charts by 6 pm that night and they changed the home access procedure I haven't bothered to do.. so rather than leave them unattended I brought them with me. In all my passive aggressive glory. Because one of the other people there was demoted because her semi-adult child study in the waiting room waiting for her to clean up and they'd go home together. There was alot of crime in the parking garage, so frankly, going home alone was a "not recommended" activity per administration.  Like the Australian guy who'd handle snakes and stuff would say "look at it arching it back, it's REALLY angry....... I'm going to touch it." And I didn't get fired. in fact the person who sent the email sent it in error, so I didn't have to do anything, anyway and got an apology. The world is unfair, folks. This is proof. And a teaching point for the kids that if you're going to work for someone else, if you're higher on the food chain you have greater freedoms than those lower on the food chain. Look at congress if you have any doubt. They do whatever they damn well please and there is no one to stop them. But this isn't a political post. yet.

Amazing it's coming up on 2 years that I've been treading the insanity of this work place. I know this because I'm due for my annual TB test next month. I dread it because every year, waiting for the year I qualify for a positive induration.  And of course I had a patient with active TB this year... used to be once you were 35 you didn't have to do the treatment. That's changed. Maybe because there is active TB here in paradise..?

Larry is slogging through the final year of residency. I pray daily that he gets through this month and year. Assuming he does, we should have some idea of where we head next August this December. We are hoping to stay put. But as I've said before I don't expect to get my first, second or even third choice. And there is a nagging thought that if Larry is put on a probation or repeating a month that he'll be off the eligibility for choosing when everyone else is choosing and thus we'll get last pick. Like Japan. Although, the DOD is largely shut down right now, so I doubt they're going to spend money to move us anywhere anytime soon. They closed youth sports, the movie theater and commissary this week, so for sure the expense of moving a family of 6 overseas or at all is probably off the budget right now. We can hope and assume so anyway. But if not, I'm cleaning out the house of all things redundant and not being used. Except for Larry's stuff. He doesn't like it when I Craigslist or goodwill his stuff. And I don't appreciate it when he sells stuff I consider mine, either.

whelp.. I need to go feed the crowd here, they're going to start to riot since I withheld cookies and muffins a few minutes ago from the "starving" masses and the apples I offered were deemed not good.Personally I prefer them dipped in caramel... like from Buell's. Actually on my list of things I want to do when we're in CT.. in no particular order
1. see trees
2. visit autum
3. take kids to Sturbridge Village
4. take kids to Plymouth Plantation (both in case I succeed at #10 below)
5. gorge on Buells apples, possibly shipping a case back to myself.
6. oh, right. grandparents.
7. and other grandparents
8. and a great grandma
9. and cousins/brother/sil
10. encourage family to move from New England


California's ok. I understand Texas is better although it's still mostly hearsay.

Crazy paranoid world we live in

So, this year we had annual Disney passes. And our annual ends tomorrow, or today. Depending if "though 8/21" means it's ok on 8/21 or until 8/21.

Anyway, in my weird math way of looking at things, I wanted to go 15 times to have it be a reasonable deal. 12 times and we'd break even on the parking- that is until they raised the cost of that, too. And we bought them the week before the prices went up, so it was a do or don't sort of year and we'd saved and budgeted for it. But if you used the current prices and our price paid, 10 visits would have been ok deal wise.  Of course I went a little crazy with the vacation budget this past year and also bought plane tickets for the east coast and we did a week long stint visiting places that have too much or no summer with our family.  (FYI Utah/AZ and NM apparently has too much summer. Colorado seems to miss the summer bus, at least the mountains did.. hello.. Arctic tundra?)

Back to Disney and the blog worthy post of the year.

So yesterday was visit 14. And today might be visit 15. Might. If they let us in the park.

Because apparently it's not too hard to shut down an entire building/ride at Disney. We did it. Accidentally.

So if you go to Disney and want to not accidentally shut down part of the park waiting for SWAT to arrive, learn from our experience...

So when we go, the kids mostly want to bring backpacks to keep their treasures and snacks and drinks in. I'm ok with this (was ok with this) because hauling bottles of drinks makes me feel like a pack mule. Disney lets us bring in our water bottles and even juice boxes or Gatorade bottles. I love this and in turn buy something there everytime kinda in return for 'thanks for not making me buy stuff, in return I'll voluntarily spend money here'

OK.. back to backpacks and waterbottles - towards the late afternoon we went into the imaginations area that has a "Be Iron man" game. The wait for this was long and painful but it was new and we'd just (as in the day before) say the movie at free movie day on Base, so the kids were like "oh, cool! I can put on his suit?!" not quite, it's a virtual game and a virtual suit...  And the line was down this tunnel and while there we over heard a conversation that went "do you have a lost and found here?" to which the answer was "yes, I'll take you there" Remember this.

BUT virtual suit just wasn't realistic with a backpack on, so during our turn JM bowled his bag towards the wall  for his turn. 2 kids later, we walk out to leave. Usually I do an obsessive kid and bag check after loosing 1 wallet, 1 purse and 1 cellphone in the past 2-3 yrs. This time, no I was so frustrated by kids 1 and 4 lack of self control about touching virtual siblings and freaking out virtual game that I couldn't think straight. Decide it's one last ride we had fast passes for and we're out of there. But oh, wait, we have to stop at the bathroom, get 10 minutes into the line and I look at a bouncing JM and think aloud "where is your backback?" to which he answers he gave it to me.  Think back and remember him bowling it in the general direction of my feet. crud.

Go back to the building, into the main door and instead of following the path we're supposed to take meandering through the building, I try to go right straight for the last know address of the backpack. Disney Dude stops me says, you can't go in there, I tell him, I'm just going back for his bag he forgot and walk past, mostly with his permission. Turn the corner and we see it there, JM is relieved it hasn't been stolen ans as we walk to it, we're stopped with  "You can't go there!"
 uh.. what? 'I just want to get his bag he forgot'
in steps Disney Gal "it's been here 20 minutes, security has to clear the area"

this is taking a while to get into my brain.  And I tell her we came back as soon as we realized we forgot it.
"we have to clear the area, everyone need to evacuate!" and they continue to tell people to leave.
You and I know there were people there waiting for 40 minutes to pretend to be iron man, they are NOT NOT NOT happy about this. its not like they're moving the lines outside, they're just telling everyone to get out..

Up steps off duty LA county sheriff who offers to open the back to prove it's not a threat. NOPE, he has to leave, they need Disney swat to come clear it.

So am I supposed to stay here and wait for this or am I supposed to leave? Nope stay, they'll need to talk to you. Goodie. I can't wait to be arrested by Disney.

Then Disney gal says, "well, at least you'll get to see a cute puppy"
Which of course gets Sonia's attention.  Joy. a bomb sniffing dog for a graham cracker and juice covered bag. It's getting even better. Sonia rattles off dogs who sniff bomb facts for 10 minutes and decides he'll be bringing a beagle.

Finally swat dude (who surprisingly isn't dressed like a Ninja. I imagined him in all black/body armour) arrives. Gives us a look, the hyper clear-the-area-security-duo a look and says "is this the backpack?" mind you it's child size and mostly empty. I'm sure it looks like a threat. And he did not bring the bomb sniffing beagle. Asks me to describe it. 'Well, it used to be a diaper bag, but now he uses it as his disney outing backpack, he has a half drunk juice box, graham cracker crumbs and a key chain on the zipper that says "california" because the zipper pull was broken.' Enough detail for you? Tells me I can come and open it. And ohh! Surprise! there is also a empty water bottle and kit kat wrapper (I didn't know he had a kit kat today. I didn't know we had kit kats in the house) And they let us go. We flee the area hoping to avoid the angry mob that we imagine has formed.

Head out of the park to Mcdonalds across the street to wait for the combined disbelief and embarrassment to subside. Bring the offending backpack and all other backpacks back to the car, retrieve sweatshirts and go wait for the fireworks.

Today, after a late night the kids are getting a late start and IF IF IF we go to disney it will be for a few hours and then we'll be home by dinner.

EH.

So much to say and so little time to say it in.

From our last visit we successfully made it to Texas and back. We are officially "Texans" I guess if you call having a drivers license from that state making you officially anything. Larry in true historic fashion got super ill the first 3 days of the trip so he actually let me do most of the driving. Larry generally doesn't take vacation because he usually get sick to make for a terrible time.

Our first planned vacation to meet my grandparents? He was hospitalized with Ehrlichiosis. Went to Florida the next week taking Doxycycline and couldn't go in the sun.  Honeymoon? Bad sinus infection and he spend our cruise on Doxycycline... I forget the rest but the pattern has been set. The one outlayer was the Idaho trip. Maybe because he had plenty of time and we had nothing planned and nothing to loose that one worked out.

Anyway. We took the long way there so we could drive the old Route 66 and show the kids the real places the movie Cars was based on. Plus there are volcanoes along the way. And lately I've thought volcanoes are cool. From a distance, tho. not really keen on living on top of one of the "maybe they're not really dormant afterall" Salton Sea ones here or that one they say is a supervolcano under yellowstone. Although if I'm going to go, going fast and relatively pain free is pretty high on my list. I'm just not convinced that death by volcano would fall under pain free. Don't worry I'm not preoccupied with death but it has become one of those things that crosses my mind occasionally the further I get from the birth blip on my theoretical life time line. But much like birth it's not something I think we get a whole lot of say in the matter on.

Anyway, we hiked the Sunset Crater Volcano in New Mexico while Larry napped in the car:

That is a mountain of Geodes. For sale. By the pound. The kids, all 5 of them- had a blast here.

went through the Petrified Forest stopping long enough to become Jr Rangers and use the bathroom twice, and see a beautiful sunset

 picked up some spray paint for the Cadillacs buried in the dirt in Amarillo

 and hoped there were bathrooms at the enormous cross and stations of the cross in Groom Texas.

We studied the Missions this year with the 4th graders. Surprising to me, I didn't realize that when you don't grow up catholic that the Crucifix is pretty shocking. Especially life size ones.

We turned around to take pictures of signs in podunk areas with 3 stop lights, a town speed limit of 35 and exactly 1 dairy Queen and 1 Sonic. I think you can have a population of 15 in a town and still have a DQ and Sonic in Texas. And a feed store and a gas station that is priced higher than even California.
Pictures will be uploaded.  Pictures are worth 10000 words, ya know. And about 90 GB, apparently.

Gotta love the blue correction spray paint.

 As Larry says "NO EARL! that's not how you spell "For Sale, I"ll fix it! see - that's a 4!"

And he wonders why I don't jump at the chance to move here. The kids have to date at some point, ya know?



















If you're looking at these pictures and thinking "boy, they look cold!" I can assure you, yes. It was cold. Living in paradise we forget that the rest of the world sometimes has winter. And rain. So that was snow in the background and rain you see. Because I checked the weather in Dallas and said ;'hey, it's going to be the same as here' and forgot to check all the places we were going to travel inbetween. Besides. We're San Diegans now (sorta. I mean are Texans, too, and Connecticutans.. now I'm just making stuff up..) and we think anything below 65 degrees requires a winter coat. And I didn't pack them. Because it was May. really, mother Nature, May isn't winter south of Wisconsin normally. I just forgot we don't define winter like Wisconsin would.

We were able to spend time with by brother, his wife and their kids. Who 2 of kids glommed onto. Kayla while we always assumed was a great deal like Gracie in fact IS a great deal like Gracie, so much so that Larry took to calling them "peas" as in "2 peas in a pod" 'Jemiah' and JM when in full motion were 2 blurs of equal size and intense physical energy.  And while 1 Jm gives me pause to reconsider all things of potential weapon and destruction, 2 of them gave me greater pause. My brother, however, more tapped into his testosterone decided to give them real swords when they were using less appropriate things like sticks and brooms to play swords with. Which pretty much highlights our differences. I'd let them keep the broom and add a dust pan to it, thus changing their task but leaving their fake weapon. He supplies them with the actual supplies to do the task they actually wanted to do thus sealing his fate as cool uncle and dad.

One of what could have been the highlights of our trip was a trip to 6 flags. For homeschool day.
The poetic irony that I took my kids from their public schools to visit a different state and go to their homeschool day and bookfair isn't lost on me. But Texas is a BIG state and boy do they have homeschoolers. They rent the entire 6 flags. This could have been awesome. And was surprisingly crowded.
But the problem developed that it was raining. Apparently if there is lightening within 10 miles of texas they shut down the rides. or at least the outdoor metal ones. Which is like all of them, ya know? so they got to go one 2 rides before we were drenched to the bone, cold and hungry. We went to their Van and the kids camped out in the middle eating our packed lunches and debating if it was worth going back in. The Texas relatives went in to attend to getting their season passes while we in the van decided 'ya know, there is a 6 flags in California.... and even our kids decided 'yeah, standing in the rain for the rides to be reopened doesn't really sound like fun' It was unique and a memorable experience. 

The other part of the trip that was a bit unnerving was the weather. Knowing that we visited the east coast and brought down both an earthquake and hurricane with us, everytime the sky there got erie dark I couldn't help but worry 'what if there is a tornado' We didn't see one, gratefully so perhaps Texas wasn't sending us a 'go away' message quite like CT was.

We also got to visit dear friends in west Texas and were able to put a real live picture with the mental image I have of what west Texas meant. A kindred sister I miss living near, it was great to catch up.

Missing were other friends from close to our route that we didn't have a chance to see. Hoping there will be a next time and we'll have new opportunities in the future.

One of those days

Where if I was writing a book I'd fill a chapter or two. Entirely with work stuff. Or 90% of work stuff.

The stuff you don't see in private practice or learn about at school.

Like a person whose blood glucose is so high our meter reads "hi" to which both doctors I asked about it quipped "did you say hi back?" No, dammit. I didn't. And oh, btw the meter range is to 700. So 20 units of humalog and 30 minute later it finally comes to a level of 600 which the meter can read. And then the guy suddenly perks up and wants to go on his way, thank you very much. While I was all for calling the taxi or ambulance to allow an emergency room to manage my friend here. The doc didn't blink and eye. Oh yeah- and remember those guidelines about I'm going to get graded on my patient's HgbA1c? Taking bets this guys will be by highest yet. And not sure why his failure to take his insulin to be my responsibility. But
I lean libertarian and live and work in a democrat ruled bubble.  Insulin? 'yeah. I'm supposed to be on it'. Did you take it? 'well, no.'  When was your last dose? 'awh, gee, maybe 3 weeks ago? It's been  a while.' Oh yeah, and he's lost 45 lbs the past month. or more. And was in the ER "not too long ago" in DKA. still wearing his bracelet from that visit.

Nice guy, tho. More than I can say for some others.

And so I get home with 12 charts to finish and the remote access gives me communication failure errors. alot. and crashes. Reboot, relog on. same thing. Which means..... I get to finish tomorrow after another day of insanity. literal insanity. for both the patients and me, I think.

School news- This week as JMs school music performance. as kinder/first graders they play the sticks, drums, triangles and cymbals.  JM is in a class or rambunctious boys and they got.... you got it.... the sticks. And I cracked up watching his teacher about have a stroke trying to get them to hold the sticks on their shoulders and not hitting each other with them. 

I am their "garden parent" and I"m getting to know them. they're 70% boys. And their teacher doesn't have the experience harnessing that sort of energy. And I have get to harness and contain all of them at once, either. At least not doing anything learning based. They play a mean duck duck goose.

The garden took over the past week of my life. Not MY garden in my backyard. But the school garden. I was sucked into being on the garden committee by being the only person personally known by the rest of the garden committee to actually have a garden.

If you can imagine 4 people going on pintrest and pinning about 3 dozen great ideas and then forming a committee to try to do all these great ideas before trying them at home... that's the garden.  I'm not on pintrests. I don't have that kind of time. But I've found myself landing there when doing other searches and some of the ideas have been great and others are 'uh, did you try that? yeah? and the result sucks? I'm so not surprised. Most of everything I've tried from there was a catastrophic failure."  They had meetings ad nausem to talk about all their great ideas. I had a conflict with each of them except for the one on my birthday which I decided to take a long bubble bath instead. But things like drainage, slope, you mean I have to water these things? all the time? what do you mean full sun isn't great for all plants? ARGH. And like a train wreck that might be able to be prevented I've been there trying to fix the tracks so that train doesn't take out innocent bystanders.

So aside from trying to fix irrigation issues and slope issues and overall garden issues I also got to be the classroom parent for Sonia's and Jon's class. (who after a few days of my being there, they call him jonmichael now, sometimes.) And while other class garden parents had to talk to garden head cheese to ask her for plants ahead of time I could go to my piles of sprouted seeds, other seeds, plants I needed to thin and plant 2 whole garden boxes easily. AND we had the only strawberry plants. Which seems to draw nearly everyone's attention. I mean how exciting to carrots and signs saying there are seeds there when there are pink and red strawberries begging all adult and kids to pick them.   Today was the big garden ribbon cutting ceremony and the reason I've got sunburn and blisters from getting the dang thing ready. And today I worked all day but Sonia was appointed by her teacher to be their garden parent class liason. She's a walking talking encyclopedia of gardening knowledge so she schooled the school board and the benefactors on all things related to her class's square foot garden. She also informed me that my handwriting on the "CUKES" stick looked like "cakes" and that "nonone knew that cukes stood for cucucumber" which might not be 100% true. But if that is true - is that a local new england thing or did I pick that up somewhere else along my life? The odd regional differences sometime amuse me. Like this week in the garden and I was talking to someone who when to Boston College and someone else pipes in about a "great restaurant" I'd like. They have philly cheesesteak. huh? Philly in that means philladelphia. Not Boston. And I said, yeah, I'm sure it's great but I can't say I'm a big cheesesteak fan. Nor am I a big fan of lousy geography skills or stereotyping people based on one food.  I mean really, San Diego you want people to ask you everytime you travel if you tried the san diego style street taco restaurant in thier po dunk town? because we live in street taco heaven here and even here you have great and less than great street tacos. And THEY say they're Tiajuana style. 

I think I followed that squirrel down the rabbit trail a bit too far tonight. Sorry.

In theory this coming week we'll be visiting Texas and becoming official Texans. This sounds kinda exciting.
In actuality, Larry doesn't have that leave officially approved, by the dozens that need to approve this but the absolute earliest we could leave is sunday. We'll be missing the first week of CST testing. So sad, I know.

I took the truck in to make sure that it could actually make it across the desert of west Texas and while it was pouring antifreeze into the driveway, it's been behaving perfectly fine since I brought it to the mechanic. We will see. I should probably make sure all our AAA cards are up to date and unexpired, tho. I love our mechanic. His advice - it's working, leave it alone, travel with gallons of water and antifreeze. And he wouldn't charge me because he didn't think it needed fixing. Time will tell on that.

Been a while, hasn't it?

While I don't miss the time consumption it takes me to turn on the computer and blog, I do miss having the journal of sorts to keep track of things like pictures and all. So maybe I'll go back to this again somewhat more often.

Today's elephant in the room is waiting for news on my father in law. While I personally haven't known him to be in perfect health, waiting for a death phone call is pretty terrible, although the current news is 'well, maybe just maybe they can restore 10-15% function' While I probably could skip the 85-90% function of many organs a few key ones like the heart and brain are kinda important. So I wait and pray and worry.

The bittersweet part of it all if this year they (the inlaws) started acting like they weren't already halfway dead. They've had some other health issues and when asked to visit, to do something/etc they always had excuses of dr apts, garden, dogs, it is too hard to travel, etc. And it always bothered me that they were limited themselves beyond their actual limitations. Maybe it's just that I have a totally different philosophy that if I'm going to be more infirm in the future, I'm going to make the now count more. Carpe diem, dammit.

So now I pray that they will actually be able to something more in life.

In our lives, we're 2/3 of the way into baseball with the kids. Jonathan (who most often forgets that is his name) is on the machine pitch/Tball league. He's specialty is 3rd base and L field. And horsing around with the kid next to him.  Sonia/Joey/Kayla are all on the same AA team. Kayla's specialty is striking a pose in center field and is a fairly consistent hitter. Sonia's specialty is being the player loaned to the other teams because there aren't enough players and she also has a comical throw and swing. Joey's specialty is first base and occasionally pitching.  Their league does 2 innings with machine pitch and then 2-3 innings of kid pitch. The kid pitch is arduously slow. The machine pitch is 5 balls through the machine - hit them or not. The kid pitch goes through the full count and when you get to 4 balls, 2 strikes then the batter's coach finishes pitching. There is no walking. either you hit or you get out. The slow part is when the pitcher throws the ball so wide the catcher has to get up and chase it, then throws it to the pitcher who will miss it and chases it... repeat.  Anyway, we're playing in town this season instead of on base. I like it better in a few ways- one- it's got a small town feel. there are 3 teams. that's it. you know the other moms/players. They say the pledge of allegiance and the little league pledge that has a first line of 'I trust in God, I love my country" before every game. Seriously. here in heathen land. gotta love it. I also love that the field we play and practice on is 15 minutes away opposed to 20-25/45 with the base leagues. And we practice once a week per team (that's twice) instead of 2x/week/team with 3+ teams.. thus there alllll week long.

School is.. well...
not terrific. 

Aside from the 30+ kids/class. This year Sonia's pregnant teacher went out on bedrest in Jan and won't be back for the rest of the year. I do like her long term sub and think she does a better job of keeping Sonia on track. Keeping Sonia on track and tuned in in a long term battle. It's getting harder to keep her in her chair to even fight this battle. 

Joey. *sigh* I just got back from a conference with his teacher. Again.  At my request because she doesn't communicate with me. Joey is a task orientated kid. She runs the room like a bipolar methamphetamine addict. (this might be an exaggeration but a slight one) This year just can't end fast enough and I'm really thinking of homeschooling him next year.

Kayla tests off the charts. A delight to have in school. Everyone loves her. Charms the world and drags it around on a string. I'd say every parent has to have an "easy child" but home she's our overly emotional one, so she lost that nomination. In fact as I type she's crying that a neighbor boy did something she didn't like. Never mind that she was spraying him with a hose and he didn't like that...

Jonathan/Jon/JM/child who isn't sure what his name is anymore has about as much interest in school, learning and homework as a cat has interest in autorepair. While he wants to read, mostly, his teacher is brand new and into memorizing long lists of sight words and spelling said sight words. It's not going well. He has learned to memorize the lists and "reads" them in a sing song that is unable to actually read those words - he's just memorized the lists. If his teacher wants this monkey to read she better start some phonics. And of course every week one of his days of homework is a creative writing assignment. I kid you not. The kids can barely write, can't spell or read and you want him to WRITE a STORY?' use good description and underline capital letters and circle punctuation'? give me a break. It's kindergarten. let's start with 'keep your hands off your neighbor' and learning to write those letters that go into those words you want him to use. As it is, most days when I go to pick him up I see him wrestling with the boys in his class on the grass. It's not a wonder why he has a hole in every single pair of his pants anymore.

As far as the homelife goes- we've really been pretty blessed to be surrounded by alot of really great people. I love our neighborhood, that our kids are playing with several houses of kids, that we work out car pools and I have adult women around when Larry is scare. I love that the kids are comfortable with the neighbors that when there was a snake in the road they promptly knocked on the door of the neighbor with the most snake kills and asked him to take care of it. There have been rattlesnakes, so we're on  guard about them.  The garden it fine, this year I started everything from seed. Even non traditional seeds like seeds I've gotten from foods we ate.  The last time the chickens got out, we managed to get them all back. We are quail free and the 2 pheasants we have haven't been killed by anything yet. No goats and while Larry came home happy that someone was going to give him a trained hunting dog I was less than happy to have one more thing added to the list of things that need to be cared for and put an emotional foot down on it. 

There is supposedly a development being built directly behind our house, but we haven't seen any surveyors or bulldozers there in a little while. Hopefully they will decide it's cost prohibitive.  We thought we'd built the garden/chicken coop right up to the back line, but our original owner neighbors say the property line goes a few feet beyond the ditch we thought was the line. So I'm a little relieved that while our chickens will probably be a detriment  for their home values that we're not actually breaking any setback rules. The plan floating around the neighborhood for the proposed houses have lot sizes 4 times our lot sizes, so them's gonna be expensive houses. I'm sure they'd love to set right back up to the hillbillies with the chickens and garden, so I'm going to guess that even if they DO manage to build back there that the house directly behind us will likely be one of the last ones sold.  Larry of course denies that he is a hillbilly. I think hillbilly has a better sound to it than redneck, which is his preferred title.

In other news, I have managed to resurrect most of my pictures which has been a huge relief.  However, getting them sorted and filed has been another issue altogether. And I've decided that this year I'm going to start making photobooks so I have at least SOMETHING for the kids to look at to remember their good parts of their childhood. And a youtube channel or something for the other vidoes that don't get into photobooks, maybe.

Last week we went to get tires for the truck. It was an all day adventure. Every year- actually 2x/year the Naval base as a 'scratcher sale' this means you get this card in the mail and when you go to shop there, they scratch off the circle (think lotto tickets) and it reveals 5-50% off. Of course you can't scratch and then shop and you can't add a furniture set to the purchase if you do get the 50% off.. but well, when you're spending big bucks you think it's worth a gamble. Apparently alot of other people had this idea. I called on a monday asking if a. they had the tires Larry wanted and b. can I make an apt and was told a. you have to come in to buy the tires and they have them ordered and delived that day and b. no, it's first come first serve and they won't be able to take any more cars that day (I called at 9 am) and tomorrow am they open at 7.

Well tomorrow am I was awake at 7 but we weren't there in line at 7. We (all because they kids were out of school) got there close to 8. The line was 5 people deep and when I get to the counter they say they're not sure they'll get it done before close of day that day. I look at him. He repeats himself. I look at my watch, do the math and say 'you mean it's going to take over 8 hours to get tires?' yes. that's what he meant. BUT if I wanted to pay for the tires now I can make an apt to have them put on when the sale is over. BUT I called yesterday and the lady said they won't make appointments so I drove an hour to get here today. grumble. well we're here now. put the tires on the thing. grumble grumble.

So we walked to the main exchange, the commissary ate snacks, wandered and looked at stuff. Walked to the bowling alley. bowled for a few hours. Walked to the trolley, took it to Old Town. Walked around there. Decide we should get back by end of day/closing even though they didn't call me about having the tires done.

And at this point we walk back get on to the trolley and it takes F.O.R.E.V.E.R to get there. it took 20 minutes to get to Old Town, I swear it took 40 to get back. It seemed every person in a wheel chair that needed assistance needed to get on or off at nearly every stop. And at this point I start sweating that they'll close and we'll really be SOL to get home because I don't know anyone who can easily pick up us from downtown San Diego and our car that can accommodate us is the one that might get locked in for the night. And the public transit would probably take us 3 hours at the rate we were going. Not to mention that I had to work the next day. So we finally get to our stop and double time it to the repair shop. Which technically was supposed to close 5 minutes before we got there. However, it is impossible to close with the line of people trying to check out/get their car/pay is 15 people long and out the door. Had I foreseen this possibility I would have worried less. As it was, our scratcher thing only saved us 5% which after the amount I spent on bowling, food and the trolley we didn't come out ahead. But we got the keys, the truck and went to get pizza since all that walking makes us hungry.The kids thought it was a fun adventure and I guess that's all that matters.

That week we also did the big 4th grade CA mission field trip. On our own.Not with the school. That's how things in a budget strapped state gets done.  They were assigned yet another big project. And yet another night before it was due I was up helping collate, correct and type. This time it was the CA Missions project. If you've lived in CA with a 4th grader using any sort of state mandated curriculum you know about this project. If you live anywhere else in the US this is what you're missing. Up until this year, the 4th graders had to build a model of the mission. In reality this was really a throw-down of whose father had the best carpentry skills. This year, the powers to be decided that this mission building wasn't really teaching the kids anything. Least wise nothing about the missions. They were catching some finer points of testosterone driven competition. So they  (the powers to be) assigned other options. Pick and choose you have to choose at least 10 points. Joey chose exactly 10. Sonia chose 13. One of the 3 point parts was to visit a mission, get a brochure and write a one page summary. Another 2 points could be achieved by taking pictures of a mission and putting them on poster board and 3 points could be achieved by completing an official scavenger hunt at one of the 2 somewhat close missions.

So, as you can guess, a trip to the mission could kill 8 of the required 10 points or in my case 16 of the 20 points, so I wanted big return on my time investment.

Not Joey got the San Juan Capistrano mission and was psyched because we'd gone up there this summer and he was kinda familiar with it. Sonia got the furthest one north. But the whole points thing didn't matter which mission you went to, so I looked into our options. Option A was the San Juan one. 1 hour away and all said and done would cost us $60 plus the gas to get there and back. Option B was the one here in Oceanside which was free because military was free. hummmm.. $60 plus 2+ hr drive or 15 minutes and free...?? such decisions.

So tonight was the last night this was all due and tonight at 9 pm Sonia was pasting pictures on posterboard. I didn't feel the least bit bad about keeping her up to finish because that kid takes after her father and her best thinking seems to happen when the rest of the world wants to be asleep. Like me.