“Is that a tick?” –various
“That bird is impossibly blue. That’s amazing.” –Bridgett
“So St. Benedict’s philosophy is essentially, live life to the fullest and don’t do things half-assed?” –Colleen
“I would guess that 90% of all organizations are dysfunctional.” –Maloki
“This hill is really big.” –Sophia
“Let’s build a dam!” –Mike
“I think that’s a catbird. Meow.” --Bridgett
“I fell out of the hammock. It was fun.” –Sophia
“Wow, these are really good potatoes.” –various
“Maloki, get the bug glass.” –Mary
“Did you say TWO flat tires?” –Bridgett
“Take highway 28 south through Dixon, about 17 more miles, you’ll get to St. Robert’s. The WalMArt is on the outer road.” –Cathy Corey
“I haven’t been to a WalMart in…over a year.” –Bridgett
“We really don’t have a choice—it’s a Saturday.” –Mike
“They can fix both the tires, no problem.” –Bridgett
“Snow cones! That will be awesome! And Sophia will love them.” –Colleen
“That was the most successful trip to WalMart ever.” –Bevin
“Did you bring the camera? I want a picture of this fish.” –Mike
“Bevin! Sit down! You’re rocking the canoe!” –Bridgett
“No! That’s a snake in the boat!” –Bevin
“Is it a garter snake?” –Bridgett
“No! I don’t know what it is!” –Bevin
“Don’t try to pick it up! We have to kill it!” –Bridgett
“Don’t let it get near me!” –Colleen
“Colleen [expletive deleted]! Keep rowing! That’s your job—we’ll get the snake!” –Bridgett
“Don’t let us hit the bank!” –Bridgett
“I can’t! I’m too weak!” –Colleen
“Use your paddle! Here! It’s on yours now!” –Bevin
[splash]
“Was that…a cottonmouth?” –Bevin
“I think it was just a diamondback water snake.” –Bridgett
“It was a baby, though. It could have been anything.” –Colleen
“All my adrenaline is gone. The hill is too big!” –Bevin
“If we tell Sophia about the snake she will never ever get in a canoe.” –Bridgett
“Wow, what a pretty butterfly!” –Colleen
Monday, May 29, 2006
Friday, May 26, 2006
Note to You
Dear Readers: Nobody has commented in a long time. Please comment if you read. I'm starting to get insecure, and frankly, I don't make a good Woody Allen character. Much better when I feel like I fit in the world where I think I should. I could name names, those of you out there who read this and have never ever commented. Mike. Brian. Bevin. Sigh. Oh well. On with the regularly scheduled blog entry. Note that I've figured out how to use italics. And bold.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
The Matrix
Ok, I'm going to go ahead and file matrices in the "never ever going to have to use these" math pile at the bottom of the trash can.
You know, I am not a math person, ironically, since I love teaching it. I'm actually really good at teaching it, honest, I am, and I'm not good at teaching everything. Like reading. Suck at that. But I'm good at teaching math because, as Dale Preston explained it to me while teaching me how to create stained glass windows, I am successful at remaining in the "conscious of knowing" stage when it comes to math.
[Quickly: four stages to learning & teaching: "the unconscious of not knowing," which means you don't even know that, say, matrices exist. Then there's the "conscious of not knowing" stage, which is when you are learning about matrices, still make mistakes, have to review the rules, etc. The "conscious of knowing" stage is when you're best at explaining it to others--you know the pitfalls to learning matrices, you are still fresh out of the unknowing box, you can relate to those who still struggle. The worst teachers, especially the worst math teachers (actually, they make the worst fencing teachers too, but that's for another day) are the "unconscious of knowing" people. At that point, matrices are second nature. You don't understand why someone wouldn't get them immediately, you can't explain them except by successfully completely a problem again and again. Lousy for the unknower. OK, that wasn't quickly, but it got my point across hopefully.]
So anyway, Rachel had a test in finite math today, so we didn't do her homework from yesterday until this afternoon, post-test, when she could look forward again. But I had the problems ahead of time, which was a good thing, since I really have no clue about matrices. I never learned them. I made it through calculus in college (barely), I took 4 years of high school math, and never once encountered them. They seem cumbersome for the average Algebra II student. Perhaps they are more useful further down the math line. But as opposed to learning about, say, compound interest or half lives, they are not something I can even put into a real life situation.
Until today. They're used for cryptography. You can take a message, like "BLOW UP THE BRIDGE", and run it through a 2 x 2 matrix, and get a whole string of nonsense numbers. Then you can broadcast this on your little number station outta Cuba and your spy in China or England or wherever can use his little tear off sheet with the decoding matrix and find out that it's time to go buy some plastic explosives.
[Having heard numbers stations when I was a teenager in Georgia tooling around with my shortwave radio, I can say they chill you to the bone. Love them. The first CD I burned was mp3 files of number stations, in fact. I am a total geek, yes.]
Beyond cryptography, though, which of course Rachel will never need, they don't seem too useful. Why is it that we need to learn things simply because they exist, anyway? Why do I have to know that the inverse of matrix A, where A is defined as:
[a b]
[c d]
is equal to:
____1__ [d -b]
a(d) - c(b) [-c a]
This is probably the least useful piece of information that is now stored in my synapses. Less useful than the German words to the song "My hat, it has 3 corners" or the Old Testament books in (Catholic) order.
And, try as I might, I just didn't grok that movie, either.
You know, I am not a math person, ironically, since I love teaching it. I'm actually really good at teaching it, honest, I am, and I'm not good at teaching everything. Like reading. Suck at that. But I'm good at teaching math because, as Dale Preston explained it to me while teaching me how to create stained glass windows, I am successful at remaining in the "conscious of knowing" stage when it comes to math.
[Quickly: four stages to learning & teaching: "the unconscious of not knowing," which means you don't even know that, say, matrices exist. Then there's the "conscious of not knowing" stage, which is when you are learning about matrices, still make mistakes, have to review the rules, etc. The "conscious of knowing" stage is when you're best at explaining it to others--you know the pitfalls to learning matrices, you are still fresh out of the unknowing box, you can relate to those who still struggle. The worst teachers, especially the worst math teachers (actually, they make the worst fencing teachers too, but that's for another day) are the "unconscious of knowing" people. At that point, matrices are second nature. You don't understand why someone wouldn't get them immediately, you can't explain them except by successfully completely a problem again and again. Lousy for the unknower. OK, that wasn't quickly, but it got my point across hopefully.]
So anyway, Rachel had a test in finite math today, so we didn't do her homework from yesterday until this afternoon, post-test, when she could look forward again. But I had the problems ahead of time, which was a good thing, since I really have no clue about matrices. I never learned them. I made it through calculus in college (barely), I took 4 years of high school math, and never once encountered them. They seem cumbersome for the average Algebra II student. Perhaps they are more useful further down the math line. But as opposed to learning about, say, compound interest or half lives, they are not something I can even put into a real life situation.
Until today. They're used for cryptography. You can take a message, like "BLOW UP THE BRIDGE", and run it through a 2 x 2 matrix, and get a whole string of nonsense numbers. Then you can broadcast this on your little number station outta Cuba and your spy in China or England or wherever can use his little tear off sheet with the decoding matrix and find out that it's time to go buy some plastic explosives.
[Having heard numbers stations when I was a teenager in Georgia tooling around with my shortwave radio, I can say they chill you to the bone. Love them. The first CD I burned was mp3 files of number stations, in fact. I am a total geek, yes.]
Beyond cryptography, though, which of course Rachel will never need, they don't seem too useful. Why is it that we need to learn things simply because they exist, anyway? Why do I have to know that the inverse of matrix A, where A is defined as:
[a b]
[c d]
is equal to:
____1__ [d -b]
a(d) - c(b) [-c a]
This is probably the least useful piece of information that is now stored in my synapses. Less useful than the German words to the song "My hat, it has 3 corners" or the Old Testament books in (Catholic) order.
And, try as I might, I just didn't grok that movie, either.
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
The Juggernaut Continues
Tutoring…what a mixed blessing that is right now. Any job. But this one—it’s perfect, right? I work at home, the girls can play or watch a movie while I work, and my brain gets some stimulation while I make a little money—actually, hour for hour, more money than teaching (by far). Except that this equation has a missing variable.
Maeve.
She is making me crazy. Yesterday I worked with Rachel for 90 minutes, and the last twenty had Maeve clinging to my leg crying hysterically because I was ignoring her. She’d been asleep the rest of the time. Sophia was wise enough to high tail it out of the house and go begging at neighbors’ doors to let her in and away from her boring mother.
Today is Rachel and then immediately followed by Angela. That promises to be 2 ½ hours of math with Mike working late at Monsanto and Maeve watching “My Neighbor Totoro” for the 12th time this week.
On the other, lucrative hand, Rachel is basically going to pay for Christmas this year.
I guess Maeve will just have to tough it out. On Sunday I talked with Peggy and with Ann about their kids and potential summer work and next school year or years to come. Rachel is going to be done with math FOREVER on June 16; Angela is a sophomore and won’t be around much longer. I don’t like to advertise and wind up with aggravating children whose parents don’t know me or my crazy daughters. The summers I worked at MICDS were tortuous. I made a ton of money, but it was spent in bribes for Sophia and babysitting. Plus the parents expected miracles and for me to join their personal staffs. Not too cool for little old socialist me.
This weekend we’re heading out of town towards Rock Eddy Bluff, on the Gasconade River, where we will “rough it” in fully functional houses with plumbing, electric stoves, and comfy queen sized beds. But there are canoes and a campfire (last time, I kept a campfire going such that I used one match all weekend. I hope to match that (har har) this weekend as well). I’ll have Sophia soak up as much natural history as her brain will hold in that short time and we’ll listen for the owls and whip-poor-wills in the evening. I love that place. It makes me want to own my own land out in the Ozarks, but then I would have to do stuff like mowing and plumbing. It’s nice to just go lie in the hammock and slowly shut my eyes, letting the past month or so of rushing around just kind of fall away. Ah. I am there already in my mind, which is a bad thing, since I’m tutoring in 3 hours. What? Compound interest? Augmented matrices? Look at the hickory tree…hear the river…ah.
Maeve.
She is making me crazy. Yesterday I worked with Rachel for 90 minutes, and the last twenty had Maeve clinging to my leg crying hysterically because I was ignoring her. She’d been asleep the rest of the time. Sophia was wise enough to high tail it out of the house and go begging at neighbors’ doors to let her in and away from her boring mother.
Today is Rachel and then immediately followed by Angela. That promises to be 2 ½ hours of math with Mike working late at Monsanto and Maeve watching “My Neighbor Totoro” for the 12th time this week.
On the other, lucrative hand, Rachel is basically going to pay for Christmas this year.
I guess Maeve will just have to tough it out. On Sunday I talked with Peggy and with Ann about their kids and potential summer work and next school year or years to come. Rachel is going to be done with math FOREVER on June 16; Angela is a sophomore and won’t be around much longer. I don’t like to advertise and wind up with aggravating children whose parents don’t know me or my crazy daughters. The summers I worked at MICDS were tortuous. I made a ton of money, but it was spent in bribes for Sophia and babysitting. Plus the parents expected miracles and for me to join their personal staffs. Not too cool for little old socialist me.
This weekend we’re heading out of town towards Rock Eddy Bluff, on the Gasconade River, where we will “rough it” in fully functional houses with plumbing, electric stoves, and comfy queen sized beds. But there are canoes and a campfire (last time, I kept a campfire going such that I used one match all weekend. I hope to match that (har har) this weekend as well). I’ll have Sophia soak up as much natural history as her brain will hold in that short time and we’ll listen for the owls and whip-poor-wills in the evening. I love that place. It makes me want to own my own land out in the Ozarks, but then I would have to do stuff like mowing and plumbing. It’s nice to just go lie in the hammock and slowly shut my eyes, letting the past month or so of rushing around just kind of fall away. Ah. I am there already in my mind, which is a bad thing, since I’m tutoring in 3 hours. What? Compound interest? Augmented matrices? Look at the hickory tree…hear the river…ah.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Luke 2:51-52
Big weekend. Fr. Mike had his last mass at St. Pius as our pastor. It was sad and happy and hopeful and wistful and all those emotions that get wrapped up in occasions like weddings, graduations, funerals—bon voyage. We are sad for ourselves more than for anything or anyone else. It was time for him to go. He’d been at St. Pius for 11 years, weathering the storms of school mergers, financial difficulties, neighborhood transitions, demographic changes, and the threat of parish “suppression,” the ugly term the Church uses to denote a parish that has been closed. We survived, and took in the territory of several other parishes, although they remained open with various non-geographical foci. The Tridentine (Mass in Latin) church; the Polish language church; the whatever-St. Wenceslaus-is-now church. Our territory extends from the river to Gustine, and we sit at the western edge of that.
But I didn’t come to talk about parish closings and new territory and intricacies of Catholic life in St. Louis. Fr. Mike is leaving us and heading out to Bishop du Bourg High School, from where my sisters graduated, actually, a co-ed south city high school with an undeserved mediocre reputation. If I ever manage to produce any male children, that’s where I’ll persuade them to attend. Don’t know about these girls I’ve got. But co-ed versus single-sex education is a topic also for another day. Du Bourg reminds me a lot of my own alma mater, Mt. Carmel High School, down in Houston. An underdog, relatively working class demographically, built in the fifties. Du Bourg is far larger, but it’s a solid comparison. Fr. Mike is going to be the Vice President. I’m not sure if this means he gets to shoot people on quail hunting trips or get whisked away to undisclosed locations. I’m actually not sure at all what it entails. But I assume it has something to do with leadership and spirituality and guidance. He’s a great catch for them. He will do well there and the teens who encounter him will be as blessed as I was with Patrick Spedale down at Mt. Carmel. I’m sure he will wind up looming large in the lives of graduates, who will look back and know he was a strong influence in their development as Catholic Christian adults.
I know this because that’s exactly what he was for me. Fr. Mike, Br. Stephen, the aforementioned Patrick, Sr. Joan Range, Fr. John Kavanaugh, and Dr. Barmann. That’s my list. Yes, I encountered many of them after I was technically an “adult”, but I had so far to go, even now I still do.
Mike in particular challenged me. I worked for him, very briefly in the grand scheme of things, teaching at St. Pius V grade school. I started there rather green—it was my 4th year of teaching, I still saw the world in absolutes, and I had the social graces and skills of a Missouri mule. Needless to say, I was a great math teacher and an absolute failure with the adults. I left on somewhat bad terms, but I didn’t run away from St. Pius the parish. And that was because Mike had been working that into my psyche for several years already. When the going gets tough, you start praying and dig in your heels. Or some sort of mixed metaphor. The end result is that I have survived every player in the drama at that grade school—the principal is gone, the teachers are gone (save one who is at Cabrini, the school we created by merging with Notre Dame), a couple of key parishioners are gone, and now Mike is gone.
But I’m still here. And I can count several parishioners as my very close friends, and that’s due to that push from Mike, that challenge to remain present in a community even when my anger, indignation, shame, all those negative feelings, obviously produced the flight instinct (because fight had failed). I stayed. I didn’t talk to Mike for over a year, except in an official capacity (Sophia’s baptism). I relaxed, I stayed out of the limelight and out of volunteer work.
Then this past year, 6 people nominated me for parish council. I wasn’t one of them. Perhaps it was time to step forward again. Perhaps I was a bit more seasoned, a bit wiser, definitely better at working with other adults. It’s funny, because this past year, I was seriously drawn towards leaving Catholicism. I’d been praying for discernment. I guess this is what you get when you pray for discernment: responsibility. So I started on parish council, sitting at the same table with Mike again, but not as employee or errant parishioner, but as something of a leader.
I will miss him, but I realize that I have probably done all the growing and changing I can do with his guidance. It will stretch my brain and heart to eat at Fr. John’s table for a while. You know, when it says in the bible that “Mary held these things in her heart,” it doesn’t say she cherished them because they were happy memories. She cherished them because they were important. Not everything—not even the majority—of my interactions with Mike has been hearts and flowers. But that’s not all there is to a full life.
But I didn’t come to talk about parish closings and new territory and intricacies of Catholic life in St. Louis. Fr. Mike is leaving us and heading out to Bishop du Bourg High School, from where my sisters graduated, actually, a co-ed south city high school with an undeserved mediocre reputation. If I ever manage to produce any male children, that’s where I’ll persuade them to attend. Don’t know about these girls I’ve got. But co-ed versus single-sex education is a topic also for another day. Du Bourg reminds me a lot of my own alma mater, Mt. Carmel High School, down in Houston. An underdog, relatively working class demographically, built in the fifties. Du Bourg is far larger, but it’s a solid comparison. Fr. Mike is going to be the Vice President. I’m not sure if this means he gets to shoot people on quail hunting trips or get whisked away to undisclosed locations. I’m actually not sure at all what it entails. But I assume it has something to do with leadership and spirituality and guidance. He’s a great catch for them. He will do well there and the teens who encounter him will be as blessed as I was with Patrick Spedale down at Mt. Carmel. I’m sure he will wind up looming large in the lives of graduates, who will look back and know he was a strong influence in their development as Catholic Christian adults.
I know this because that’s exactly what he was for me. Fr. Mike, Br. Stephen, the aforementioned Patrick, Sr. Joan Range, Fr. John Kavanaugh, and Dr. Barmann. That’s my list. Yes, I encountered many of them after I was technically an “adult”, but I had so far to go, even now I still do.
Mike in particular challenged me. I worked for him, very briefly in the grand scheme of things, teaching at St. Pius V grade school. I started there rather green—it was my 4th year of teaching, I still saw the world in absolutes, and I had the social graces and skills of a Missouri mule. Needless to say, I was a great math teacher and an absolute failure with the adults. I left on somewhat bad terms, but I didn’t run away from St. Pius the parish. And that was because Mike had been working that into my psyche for several years already. When the going gets tough, you start praying and dig in your heels. Or some sort of mixed metaphor. The end result is that I have survived every player in the drama at that grade school—the principal is gone, the teachers are gone (save one who is at Cabrini, the school we created by merging with Notre Dame), a couple of key parishioners are gone, and now Mike is gone.
But I’m still here. And I can count several parishioners as my very close friends, and that’s due to that push from Mike, that challenge to remain present in a community even when my anger, indignation, shame, all those negative feelings, obviously produced the flight instinct (because fight had failed). I stayed. I didn’t talk to Mike for over a year, except in an official capacity (Sophia’s baptism). I relaxed, I stayed out of the limelight and out of volunteer work.
Then this past year, 6 people nominated me for parish council. I wasn’t one of them. Perhaps it was time to step forward again. Perhaps I was a bit more seasoned, a bit wiser, definitely better at working with other adults. It’s funny, because this past year, I was seriously drawn towards leaving Catholicism. I’d been praying for discernment. I guess this is what you get when you pray for discernment: responsibility. So I started on parish council, sitting at the same table with Mike again, but not as employee or errant parishioner, but as something of a leader.
I will miss him, but I realize that I have probably done all the growing and changing I can do with his guidance. It will stretch my brain and heart to eat at Fr. John’s table for a while. You know, when it says in the bible that “Mary held these things in her heart,” it doesn’t say she cherished them because they were happy memories. She cherished them because they were important. Not everything—not even the majority—of my interactions with Mike has been hearts and flowers. But that’s not all there is to a full life.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Hair
Ok, I did change my hair, for those who don't see me all the time. Just briefly, because I'm hoping to get Maeve to bed and then go work on that graduation project...it's the same length, same basic style, which I love, I am so happy for Jo at Salon St. Louis for finally being the first hair stylist to not try to convince me to wear bangs/straighten my hair/spend 45 minutes on my hair each day. And after 8 months of going to see her, she finally convinced me that maybe a little color...so we did some blond highlights that, on bad days, look like stripes, but on good days look fabulous. I would post a picture, but right now, too tired, would have to get the camera, etc. I will try soon.
Friday, May 12, 2006
Laughter At Women Who Do Too Much
You should be laughing at me. I’ve had one of those, well, fortnights. Mike has been out of town periodically, in town momentarily. Sophia has finally caught the stomach bug that took Maeve a week to boot for good. Happy Mothers Day!
We had a block-wide yard sale during the first round of stomach bug and Mike travel. I had a modest success—probably not worth my time in the end, but it was fun to chat with the neighbors. All the extras got tossed into the van and headed over to Salvation Army.
Did I mention that the yard sale, stomach bug, and Mike travel were also on the day of the parish picnic? I worked briefly at the food booth after the sale (I’d been up for a long time by that point, but at least I wasn’t drunk like last year’s volunteer effort). Came home, Mary Helen dropped off the girls, and we went BACK to Pius so that Sophia could give me a heart attack on the ferris wheel. I didn’t let her ride the swings, the ones that fly up in the air and go round in a circle. Funny—when I was a kid, those would have been tame.
After the picnic, which also involved the eating of funnel cake and spring rolls, and a couple of silly games for Sophia to play, we came back to the house, and then walked right across the street for, yes, the Kentucky Derby Party.
Mint Juleps are officially the first drink I have encountered that I would prefer never to encounter again.
The yard sale served as a catalyst to get my house clean. It feels lighter. I repainted the front stair treads (meaning the flat part of my front staircase) where the blue paint had worn down to wood. I wish my staircase wasn’t painted. But expedience is the better part of valor when your kid has lead poisoning. As it turned out, ironically, there’s no lead on the staircase. But panic is the better part of the latex paint industry and so we have a blue and green front stairs. It draws from our stairwell stained glass window. It isn’t bad, and now that it’s repainted and touched up, I like it again.
Bleys update: he’s just a little bastard. The world is his litter box. Ah well. The cats are currently on parole from the basement. We’ll see how long the pee-free rug lasts.
In other news:
*I have another tutoring student, back from college, who is going to take some time. Finite math, which, apropos, is the final math course she will ever take.
*The other tutoring student will be done with me until the fall in a mere 3 weeks.
*I’m writing a book. It’s non-fiction, about Friedrich Froebel. Fascinating stuff. How I never heard of this before I will never understand.
*Every weekend from here until the Fifth of Never is booked, booked, booked. Fun stuff, like Rock Eddy over Memorial Day weekend, and a wedding shower, a graduation party, and our priest’s going away celebration. But crowded. I am about at the point that it’s time to hire a nanny until June 25th. But I’m not the sort of gal who would do well with a personal staff.
*I’ve lost 16 pounds in the past 5 weeks. Of course, I probably packed it all back on just with yesterday’s noshing. Who knows how this works? Not me. It’s magic, I tell you.
*My present for Bevin’s graduation is almost complete. I can’t say what it is because she occasionally reads this, and her roommate Colleen (umm, that would be the youngest sister) might spill the beans as well. Working my fingers to the bone on this one, though. No, it is not a knit mortarboard.
*Sophia just did a wet paper watercolor painting of a cardinal (the bird not the hierarchy), two trees, and the blue sky. Moments like that, or when I was watching Maeve grin at me while she fell asleep in her carseat yesterday on the way home from Sappington Market, are why I am still a mom.
*Sitting at Hartford Coffee yesterday, watching Maeve play, I was listening to two new moms with slings talk about breastfeeding and babywearing and all those other things I’m old hat at. It made me poignantly miss the presence of someone to have coffee with. I’m saying that wrong—I have coffee with people all the time. What I mean is someone, who 4 ½ years ago, would have had coffee with me while I held Sophia and she held Ben or Vivian or Amos or whomever. I was seriously alone that first year—I had friends without kids, I had acquaintances with kids, mostly much older than mine, but there wasn’t anyone in that spot. So of course I interjected my opinions into their conversation, bragged about how long it took my period to come back, and then buried myself in the Get Out section of the Post.
My neighbor Amanda just brought over a yummy loaf of pumpkin raisin bread. I promptly had two slices (they were small. But still). Crabby Sophia is eating, Maeve is awake and needing some work in the diaper department. Alas.
(Insert witty ending thought here).
We had a block-wide yard sale during the first round of stomach bug and Mike travel. I had a modest success—probably not worth my time in the end, but it was fun to chat with the neighbors. All the extras got tossed into the van and headed over to Salvation Army.
Did I mention that the yard sale, stomach bug, and Mike travel were also on the day of the parish picnic? I worked briefly at the food booth after the sale (I’d been up for a long time by that point, but at least I wasn’t drunk like last year’s volunteer effort). Came home, Mary Helen dropped off the girls, and we went BACK to Pius so that Sophia could give me a heart attack on the ferris wheel. I didn’t let her ride the swings, the ones that fly up in the air and go round in a circle. Funny—when I was a kid, those would have been tame.
After the picnic, which also involved the eating of funnel cake and spring rolls, and a couple of silly games for Sophia to play, we came back to the house, and then walked right across the street for, yes, the Kentucky Derby Party.
Mint Juleps are officially the first drink I have encountered that I would prefer never to encounter again.
The yard sale served as a catalyst to get my house clean. It feels lighter. I repainted the front stair treads (meaning the flat part of my front staircase) where the blue paint had worn down to wood. I wish my staircase wasn’t painted. But expedience is the better part of valor when your kid has lead poisoning. As it turned out, ironically, there’s no lead on the staircase. But panic is the better part of the latex paint industry and so we have a blue and green front stairs. It draws from our stairwell stained glass window. It isn’t bad, and now that it’s repainted and touched up, I like it again.
Bleys update: he’s just a little bastard. The world is his litter box. Ah well. The cats are currently on parole from the basement. We’ll see how long the pee-free rug lasts.
In other news:
*I have another tutoring student, back from college, who is going to take some time. Finite math, which, apropos, is the final math course she will ever take.
*The other tutoring student will be done with me until the fall in a mere 3 weeks.
*I’m writing a book. It’s non-fiction, about Friedrich Froebel. Fascinating stuff. How I never heard of this before I will never understand.
*Every weekend from here until the Fifth of Never is booked, booked, booked. Fun stuff, like Rock Eddy over Memorial Day weekend, and a wedding shower, a graduation party, and our priest’s going away celebration. But crowded. I am about at the point that it’s time to hire a nanny until June 25th. But I’m not the sort of gal who would do well with a personal staff.
*I’ve lost 16 pounds in the past 5 weeks. Of course, I probably packed it all back on just with yesterday’s noshing. Who knows how this works? Not me. It’s magic, I tell you.
*My present for Bevin’s graduation is almost complete. I can’t say what it is because she occasionally reads this, and her roommate Colleen (umm, that would be the youngest sister) might spill the beans as well. Working my fingers to the bone on this one, though. No, it is not a knit mortarboard.
*Sophia just did a wet paper watercolor painting of a cardinal (the bird not the hierarchy), two trees, and the blue sky. Moments like that, or when I was watching Maeve grin at me while she fell asleep in her carseat yesterday on the way home from Sappington Market, are why I am still a mom.
*Sitting at Hartford Coffee yesterday, watching Maeve play, I was listening to two new moms with slings talk about breastfeeding and babywearing and all those other things I’m old hat at. It made me poignantly miss the presence of someone to have coffee with. I’m saying that wrong—I have coffee with people all the time. What I mean is someone, who 4 ½ years ago, would have had coffee with me while I held Sophia and she held Ben or Vivian or Amos or whomever. I was seriously alone that first year—I had friends without kids, I had acquaintances with kids, mostly much older than mine, but there wasn’t anyone in that spot. So of course I interjected my opinions into their conversation, bragged about how long it took my period to come back, and then buried myself in the Get Out section of the Post.
My neighbor Amanda just brought over a yummy loaf of pumpkin raisin bread. I promptly had two slices (they were small. But still). Crabby Sophia is eating, Maeve is awake and needing some work in the diaper department. Alas.
(Insert witty ending thought here).
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