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.
