Perspectives

This week had it's shares of disappointments, but currently I'm not thinking about them as I write this from sunny California sitting at my friend Dani's house with not a care in the world. This is payback time for all extra work I had to do when we first came home from Norway. It was Kory's idea to reduce my stress one day by suggesting I plan a little weekend get-away so I had something to look forward to. It worked then and it's working well now, even though I wasn't sure I was actually going to make it here. I'm such a skeptic sometimes.

I decided to be hip and use the new light rail system to get to the airport from downtown Seattle. Kory and I were up at 5am on Thursday so he could drop me off and I could take the supposedly 40 minute tram to the airport. I had plenty of time, but that was only if I believed what I had read on the internet. It felt so European as I was completely unsure how it all worked and didn't realize until I was at the airport I was supposed to buy the ticket before I got on the tram. I felt like a foreigner in my own land. It actually took nearly 90 minutes to get from Seattle to Sea-Tac as the rail doesn't go all the way just yet and there was a transfer involved that ate a lot of time. I arrived too late to catch my flight and I had a ticket that allowed for no changes. I prayed before I approached the agent to tell her of my dilemma. Because, she said, I decided to try the new light rail, she had mercy on me and booked me on a new flight with no fees. Whew. I was to arrive at 10am in Fresno and spend the day with my friend's husband but I knew that wasn't going to happen so I made the best of the day anyway. I didn't want to sit at Sea-Tac all day so I
asked for a flight to Portland so I could spend the day there instead. I never hurts to ask.

The agent was more than accomodating so I was able to spend the day in Portland just a few tram stops from the airport where I did a little tax-free "retail therapy" and bought a few Christmas gifts. I had a cheap lunch at Ikea and I was back at the airport waiting for my 3:20 flight to Fresno. It was a sweet day, but even sweeter when I got to see my pal Dani once I arrived in Fresno.

It's been sunny and hot since I got here so that's a nice change from the weather I left behind in Seattle. Dani treated me to a mani-pedi (manicure and pedicure)on Friday as she took the day off work to spend time with me. We did a little shopping, had lunch out, enjoyed a margarita and a few movies and chatted in all the in-between times. It's been nice to be doing her life instead of mine, even though it means we've eaten dinner on paper plates standing around the kitchen sink and have had cheez-whiz and Ritz crackers for appetizers. She doesn't have a sophisticated life, but I love her anyway.

Kory and Kaleb have been doing just fine without me. Imagine that. Two yellow labs arrived yesterday for a two week dog-sitting stint so Kaleb is in doggy heaven. He did well in school this week and I hope it continues next week without the dogs becoming a distraction. Kory is back working a little at our apartment building in Seattle and going about life as usual.

One day this week Kaleb told me, "I just can't imagine anyone else being my mom. Sometimes I think you would do just aboutanything for me ." It was one of the nicest compliments I've gotten and I assured him that was true, as long as whatever I did was for his good. There are definatly lines to be drawn in that arena and I wanted to be sure he wasn't buttering me up for something. Turns out he wasn't, I'm just a skeptic about my mothering skills.

It's good to get away to work on my perspective. And there's nothing like being with Dani to help with that task.
(The photo is of Dani and her foster granddaughter on Halloween.)

Kaleb Was a Sick Boy This Week

This week revolved around Kaleb and his ever distressed stomach. He also frequently complained of a headache but I could never tell if it was brought on by some illness or his disdain for algebra. We lost some ground on his school work schedule because of his illness – which actually started last week but having four kids in the house to run around with somehow helped him forget his pains. After the Roberts left, however, all he wanted to do was lie on the couch and moan. Just as Kory recuperated enough to get up from the couch, Kaleb took his place.

I don’t get any brownie points for being a good mom this week as I called “baloney” on most of Kaleb’s complaints and I made him do his schoolwork anyway. When I wasn’t around, Kory set him free so he could perfect his couch potato skills. Boy does Kaleb ever know how to work Kory. Without hard evidence of a fever or any other overt symptoms, I wasn’t buying it, yet his complaints persisted. He swore his stomach hurt even when he drank water, so he didn’t eat or drink much all week. Finally on Thursday, he did feel a little feverish and he said he felt nauseous. I very lackadaisically got up from the couch to go get him a barf bowl and just as I was pulling it out from the cupboard, Kaleb came running by me trying to get to the toilet. I held out the bowl just in time. I then had terrible feelings of remorse for all the grief I’d been giving him about “faking it.” So much for my mother of the year award. Needless to say, he didn’t do school work that day even though he felt much better after throwing up. He was thrilled to have the day to sit and read more “Redwall” books and play his Nintendo. The only bad part about it was that his classes from Johns Hopkins are on a schedule and he was getting behind.

Normally Friday afternoons are playtime after Friday School (the homeschool co-op we attend) but I had him stay home to do some of his work. He’s well into the depths of learning how to set up web pages and the amount of time it takes to keep up with the homework for that class is unbelievable. He got behind last week when we had company so it wasn’t good this week to try and catch up, especially when he was feeling a little punky. But he loves that web class so much he was up late Friday night and worked on it all day today – well into the night. He’s pretty excited he can now link videos and pdf files to a site – which is what he really needs to know if he’s going to set up a website for his Weekly Puppy subscribers. He’s getting close. Last night he nearly gave up as the homework was so tough, but after a good night’s sleep he figured out why certain things weren’t working the way they should and today he enjoyed the fruits of his labor. I tried to paste in the example of the kinds of things he’s “coding,” (programming) but it actually affected this website, so I had to take off the first character < from every line to keep it from reprogramming this webpage!  See, he wrote this -

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

html>
head>
title>6b
/head>
body style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',verdana;">
table width="100%" height="100%" cellpadding="10" cellspacing="0" border="0">
!-- ============ This table row and cell is the header ============== -->
tr>
td colspan="2" height="80" bgcolor="#0469B3">

My Assignment

/td>
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td width="10%" valign="top" bgcolor="#BFE2F9">
align="center">Videos
a href="my_embedded_youtubes2.htm">Video1

He so impresses me sometimes with what he is capable of, I can hardly believe we share DNA.

It was such a gorgeous day today I felt terrible Kaleb was inside on a computer but he was pumped over all the tricks he’s learning how to do and only the neighbor dog, Duchess, was able to coax him outside for a few minutes to play ball. Kory and I went a bit overboard on yard work as there was a lot of wind yesterday and when we woke up today we couldn’t see a speck of green in our lawn. All the cedar trees that surround us had left their rust colored droppings all over our yard. Plus all the maple trees dumped their leaves as well so I got out the riding lawn mower and looked at it as an opportunity to “vacuum” the yard. I love that instant gratification stuff. I then raked all the flower beds and now the yard looks like a well manicured park. I took photos because I know it won’t last long.

Kory spent the day trimming some bushes that border one of our neighbors – he was so pleased with himself that he worked hard all day and never had to go inside to lie down even once. But for several hours this evening he’s been on the couch “relaxing.”

This week was pretty routine – Sunday was church and Kaleb’s Christmas program practice; Monday Kory schooled Kaleb all day and I worked on some photo books, Kory went to Seattle on Tuesday to work at our apartment building and I went down on Wednesday to take Grammy J shopping and do some housework for her. She’s getting better but is still in a wheelchair. I love my Wednesdays with Janet. Thursday was Kaleb’s worst “sick day,” and I taught my Money management class on Friday. Most days seem so boring and routine. It really was lonely this week without company here, but just in case someone drops by, our place looks FABULOUS!

Time Marches On

We almost had a normal, routine week, but then the Robert’s came back for a visit on Wednesday and stayed til late this afternoon. It was impossible to get Kaleb to do school work after that, but we so enjoy their stays with us that we just blew off school for a few days and let the kids run wild. It’s a joy for us all when our house is full of friends (even if the kids spend most of their energy trying to spy on us). Bennett, their 8 year old boy, was running through the house yesterday and I overheard him say to Kaleb, “I sure wish you were my brother or cousin or something…” to which Kaleb replied, “I AM your brother – in Christ!” I thought that was pretty cute. They all play so well together, and we love visiting with Joni and Jimmy – lots of late nights, stories and wine. Good thing we don’t have to get up in the morning and go to work.

What school Kaleb did do – he did pretty well. His piano teacher said he is learning quicker than any kid she’s ever had – and she’s been teaching for 24 years! So maybe he’s a natural. I love having piano music in the house, even if it is just a steady plunk here and there. Kaleb also had a mid-term science project due this week which he’s nearly done with (he’s making his own bouncy balls), and he got his mid-term exam back with an 84%. He loves science, and has decided to be a mad scientist for Halloween.

I thought he was working on his Halloween costume when we went to a craft store this week. As we were getting out of the car, he’d taken a big bite of a piece of bread and began to chew it as he walked behind me. I heard a muffled, “I think I have a loose tooth” and when I turned around, all I saw were two bloody hands, blood smeared all over his face, down his neck and the wad of white bread in his mouth completely soaked in blood. It was the grossest thing I’ve seen and we had nothing to clean it up with so he went walking through the store looking for the bathroom like a real life monster. One of his molars came out – the one that had a cavity – and I couldn’t believe how huge of a hole it had eaten into the side of the tooth! It was discovered while we were in Norway but they said they wouldn’t do anything about it because the tooth would soon fall out anyway, so it served as a good example of why he needs to brush and floss and avoid sugar. Eeek.

Kory has gone three days now without even using a back brace so he’s excited about that. Each week shows more and more improvement but I’m anxious for him to get back up to his normal levels as we are still having to hire out the repairs down at our apartment building and it’s costing a fortune. Kory has started going down there once a week, but he’s still afraid to lift anything or do any big jobs, which hurts the bottom line (and his back), but hopefully not for long. I’m thinking he’s been lying around way too much though as somehow the blood has stopped flowing to his brain. I discovered all the apple cider we pressed a few weeks ago – in the basement pantry. Normally we freeze the cider, but this year, for some reason, Kory put it in the pantry. I only noticed it because the bottles swelled up so much in the process of fermenting, that they rolled right off the lower shelf where he’d stashed them. What was he thinking?
I’m continuing to plod along. I’m not nearly as productive as I’d like to be but at least I haven’t been screaming or crying lately. I have so many things I want to do but the days just fly by. Planning out Kaleb’s school days, and doing the preparation for the money class I’m teaching on Fridays are huge time consumers, and keeping the house clean is the biggest energy drain on the planet. But “this too shall pass,” as my daddy used to say.

Kaleb and I did some baking on Tuesday – he made some yummy molasses cookies and a cake for his friend. When I was upstairs taking the cookies out of the oven, he was downstairs putting the final ingredients in the pound cake (almond and lemon extract). When I licked the spoon as I was pouring the batter into the pan I noticed it didn’t taste like I thought it would. Kaleb asked if I liked his “experiment,” so I had to ask what he had done. He decided a little mint extract might also be good in the cake, which I must say, wasn’t. He thinks cooking is a lot like science because he gets to mix things together and he never knows just what might happen. Unfortunately, we have to eat the results.

We’ve had some beautiful days this week, complete with rainbows, dramatic lighting and glorious sunrises. We love where we live (see photo of our view) and we’re now thankful for the rain. Two deer have been hanging out in our driveway for a while, but something has eaten the goldfish in our pond this week. The moles are all dead and the eagles and snow geese are returning. The fall colors make my heart skip a beat and almost bring tears to my eyes. I so love this time of year.

Returning to Normal

This week I made it over the hump and now I feel like I’m beginning to slide back into routines and “normal.” The week started out pretty rough with Kaleb pushing a few of my buttons last Sunday and me screaming a bit more than is healthy, but as the week progressed, life got simpler and we started settling back into some of our old comfortable routines, which felt pretty good. I so need to be done with the stress, the screaming and the crying. Uff da.


I started taking Grammy J’s advice and used some time each day this week to clean and purge. We have enough closets and drawers in this house that if I purge a location every day it will keep me busy throughout the entire fall and winter, but that’s my goal. I could probably have one heck of a garage sale by the time I’m done, but I hate garage sales so I’m not sure where everything will end up, but I’m definitely motivated to get rid of some things. Kaleb even jumped on the band wagon and held his own private sale – selling me everything he wanted to part with – that way I’m free to do with it as I please after he’s relinquished control. He’s trying to raise money for the three week contest I’ve given the kids in my millionaire class – to see who can raise the most money during that time. I’m sure he’ll win as I can’t imagine any kid having more things to sell than Kaleb. I think he finds it easier to sell things than to work for wages, but either way, it serves me well.

Kaleb did incredible in school this week and even had a pleasant attitude while doing it, which I so appreciated. He reached the mid-term point of his science course and took a big exam, which he did well in. He was a little frustrated though with one of the first questions and didn’t write down an answer because he thought he knew the answer but felt it was too obvious and too easy, so it must be wrong. He said he’d rather leave it blank than get it wrong. I tried to tell him it’s always better to write something down than leave it blank, but he didn’t see it that way. Every once in a while he has some perfectionist tendencies, which scare me, but hopefully he’ll learn a lesson once he gets the test back and sees that he got it wrong by leaving it blank, when indeed he knew the answer but didn’t write it down. I’m just in awe of him and his ability to understand all this chemistry stuff as I couldn’t have answered a single question on that test even after watching the lectures. It just doesn’t compute in my brain for some reason, but it does in his. He also found out this week he got one of the main parts in an upcoming Christmas play at His Place church, so he’s pretty excited about that. Every year he’s been in their Christmas play, but with just a one line speaking role, so this is his big year. He always memorizes every person’s line in the whole play, in case someone is sick, hoping he’ll get to fill in their spot. He says he loves to memorize things, and I know he does, but I still can’t figure out why he can’t memorize when he’s supposed to get in bed, start school and practice his piano lessons. Time management is not his strong suit.

I spent Wednesday down in Seattle with Grammy J again – taking her swimming and doing her laundry and whatever else she needed as she’s still in recovery mode, and will be for many more weeks. It’s such a tragedy that she broke her leg, but on the other hand, it gives me an opportunity to spend more time with her. She’s like the wise Yoda that has an answer to every situation and problem in the world. I’m thankful God can work all things together for good as there are certainly some blessings to be found in this midst of her suffering. And I do believe I’ve been the recipient of an unexplained miracle this week –which I hate to even write about because it defies logic and I don’t fully understand it. But I’ve been praying earnestly for the return of my external hard drives since they went missing two weeks ago. I have faith to believe that if something is lost, God can make a new “whatever” and put it where I can find it. I know it’s happened before in my life, and this week, it happened again - my hard drives showed up! It was the strangest thing, as I had put them in the laptop case when Kaleb and I went to the water park a few weeks ago. They were at the hotel, but then when I got home I noticed they weren’t in the case anymore. I searched the Honda, called the hotel and went through our luggage time and time again. I looked in all our vehicles and everywhere I could think but they just weren’t anywhere to be found. It only made sense they were taken by someone, but today I found them on the backseat of the Lexus. And it would have made good sense to find them there if we had taken the Lexus to the water park (they could have fallen out of the laptop bag), but we didn’t take the Lexus – we took the Honda. I’ve even looked in the Lexus several times in my search for them, so I have no idea how they got there today. It’s as weird of a situation as can be but all I can say is HALLELUJAH! Oh, how thankful I am to have my files back!

Kory was shouting Hallelujah this week too as he attempted to be normal (well, as normal as he can be, anyway.) He washed and waxed the cars, blew leaves off our driveway, cleaned out the gutters and did a few home repairs. He also spent an entire day down at our apartment building in Seattle fixing things there. He’s not quite 100% but he’s close. He still has to lie down a few times a day just to take the pressure off his back, but he’s happy to have a to-do list going and projects to work on.

We had company for three nights this week – friends of friends that needed a place to stay while they visited family in the area. We so love being able to share our house with people and have friends over. Our neighbor, Joan, came over last night for the evening. We’ve had a long standing tradition that during fall and winter she comes over one night on the weekend for a soup dinner and we spend several hours playing cribbage. She lives alone, so it helps break up the long dark nights for all of us. And today our friend Tracy came up from Seattle for a visit so we took her out to a pumpkin farm to get our pumpkins and to see all the beautiful art and displays at Gordon Pumpkins. We’ve gone there every year since we moved to Skagit Valley and every year, Eddie, the owner does more and more artsy things with his place – it’s really incredible (see photo). When we were sitting at a picnic table eating pumpkin muffins, drinking cider today, I said something to Tracy and Kory that Eddie Gordon’s dad had just died recently. Kaleb piped up and said, “You mean his last name is Gordon? I thought it was called Gordon Pumpkins because they sell gourds here!” Where does he come up with this stuff?

Tonight we had our home fellowship meeting, which also contributed well to our sense of normalcy. We love our group and the time we get to spend with them. I guess I like routines as it makes life a bit more predictable and less frantic. But sometimes routines are problematic. Like the one I have now of writing a blog on Saturday night. I completely forgot to do it and went to bed at ten o’clock – then woke up at 12:30am realizing the error of my ways. It’s now 2am and I’m sitting in front of a computer, a slave to my routine. Lord help me.

ugh

It's 2am and I just finished my blog.  For whatever reason, it won't post.  I give up.

Fall Finally Fell

Looking east, as I write this, the full moon is beginning to light up the entire Skagit Valley as the setting sun to the west has turned the horizon into pure gold.  The weather today was absolutely spectacular and the sunset tonight was jaw-dropping.  Everything about this day felt like Fall.  It was a good day and I needed it.  It's been another challenging week, but in a technological kind of way this time.  (My internet connection is even down at this very minute, which only serves as the icing on the cake for me and all the techno-dilemmas I've faced lately.)

The week started out good for Kaleb and Kory.  Many months ago I reserved a room at Great Wolf Lodge, south of Olympia, where they offered a screaming deal for several homeschool co-ops in the state.  I thought it would be fun for Kaleb to spend some time with other homeschool kids as they played in the incredible water park that's at the hotel.  The hotel is a destination kind of place, totally designed for kids, so Kaleb had a blast.  Kory enjoyed having two days home by himself and I asked a friend and her son, Malik, to fill in the gap Kory left behind.  The last place Kory wants to be right now is in a water park.  I feel the same, but again, the ol' "mother's love" thing kicks in from time to time and I just gotta do what I gotta do.  I figured while Kaleb was going down the water slides and jumping in the wave pool, I'd be cuddled up with his laptop (because his works and mine doesn't), getting my lesson done for the "Millionaire" class I'm teaching on Fridays.  I brought along my two portable hard drives so I could work with my files on Kaleb's computer, but it seems someone broke into our room and took my two hard drives and Malik's wallet while we were in the waterpark.  There's no other explanation as to how all three items could go missing when the last time we all saw them was on the table in our room.  I'm still in denial, as those hard drives contained all the photos for the entire year we spent in Norway, as well as my year's worth of blogs and several other files I really didn't want to part with.  I'm holding out hope somehow they show up, because honestly, I can't deal with the thought of losing everything.  Some of the files and photos are also stored on my laptop, but that computer had a virus and had to have the hard drive formatted so I lost all the software that would enable me to access those files.  When I finally found the discs that came with the laptop so I could reload all the software, I couldn't find the "key code" number the computer needs to make them work.  That number is printed on the box the software came in and I'm pretty sure that box is sitting in our storage unit in Norway.  I just broke down and bawled at that point.  My friend Janet says I should be asking God what He's trying to teach me in all of this because I've sure had my share of headaches in trying to find things that don't seem to be where I need them to be.  She said I may need to simplify my life a little and get more organized.  Now there's a thought.

Kaleb tried to SKYPE (video call) his buddy in Norway earlier this week but the microphone didn't work on my laptop so he could see us, but not hear us.  I got a webcam and installed it on my office computer and this morning Kaleb tried to SKYPE another buddy in Norway and he could hear us, but not see us.  Finally I took the microphone off my office computer and put it on my laptop, and we were all able to see and hear all that was going on, so that was one minor triumph, but only after much time and frustration had passed.  I'm so ready to be done with computers and just go back to writing letters by hand and making old fashioned telephone calls.  I'll even get out my IBM Correcting Selectric typewriter if I'm every going to write again as I'm sure I'd be using less time than what it takes to deal with all these technological problems.  Ugh!

It's much more pleasant to think about the good things from this week and there were plenty, so I'm thankful for that.  Kory is continuing to improve and is able to do more around the house (he vacuumed today!).  He's also driving a bit more and really has no pain, just fatigue in his back if he's up too long.  He picked all the Asian pears and apples off our trees for the wonderful cider press party we attended today at my friend Wendy's house (see photo), so that was good.  We also had the Robert's family back for one night this week, which was a treat for us to spend more time with them.  And I was able to spend time with Grammy J (Janet), taking her to the pool so she could go swimming to get some strength back in her broken leg.  It was a busy week, full of school routines and schedules but we all survived.  Kaleb went through about five boxes of Kleenex though as he's had a terrible cold but that didn't keep me from cracking the whip on his school work- he's had far too many distractions to let a little sniffle slow him down now.  He's plodding along and only drags his feet on algebra.  My money management class is a big hit with the homeschool kids so that's also good (I pay well for their participation.)  And we may have found tenants for our last empty apartment in Seattle.  Woo hoo.

So, I should be thinking about all these good things rather than focusing on the negative as I'm still a bit more stressed than I'd like to be.  Kory told me he thinks I should fly to California soon to visit my good friend Dani, just to get away and have some time to myself.  Honestly, I think it's more for him to have time away from me, than for me to relax - but either way, I'm taking him up on his offer.


P.S.
(The challenges continue - who knows why the photo landed where it did, and why it failed four times in a row when I tried to post the blog?  I finally had to retype the whole thing as I couldn't copy and paste from my Word document.  Double ugh!  OK Lord, what's the lesson here?)