7 Quick Takes Friday – June 4, 2010

 

1. Wild Man has been to see the Blue Angels and the USS Alabama so far on his trip.  What a week!!  He video calls us pretty much every night if he has internet access.  He’s so excited and having a great time, but things are going to be a little more sedate as they visit family until they get to the Alamo in a week or so.

2. Rosie Girl has finished school this week!  Yesterday, she went to the High School picnic and got her yearbook and had it signed.  Today, she spent the whole day at school, going to her two classes and then spending the rest of the day going to classes with a friend.  Apparently, lots of folks were encouraging her to go to school full-time next year, but she likes her homeschooling schedule and is only going to stick with just Art and Choir at school with all of her other subjects at home.

3. I dissected a fetal pig earlier this week and demonstrated it to Rosie Girl as her final Biology activity.  She did the other dissections on her own, but the fetal pig dissection requires more skill and time, so I did the actual work and then showed her everything and we discussed the structures and their function as well as relating it back to humans.  Definitely my favorite part of the course!!

4. Yesterday, a friend and I drove to see the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible exhibit.  I can’t believe that the exhibit has been there since January and we just found out about it this week.  Sunday is the last day of the exhibit, so I had to go this week.  It was amazing, and I will devote an entire post to it later this weekend, so stay tuned!

5. This weekend is Rosie Girl’s dance recital weekend.  She has had rehearsal every day except Wednesday and the performances are tomorrow and Sunday.  Busy weekend, but it’s worth it!

6. Sunday is my and PWM’s 18th wedding anniversary!!  Yes, we were married on D-day.  It’s hard to forget your anniversary if you get married on a day like that!  We will probably end up celebrating later in the week because of the aforementioned dance recital, but that’s fine with me.  It’s the previous 18 years that are important!!

7. Next week, I plan to purchase paint and start painting the dining room and kitchen!!  Rosie Girl has said that she will help.  We’ll be eating sandwiches for a week or so while we get it done!!

That’s what’s been up here.  Check out 7 Quick Takes Friday to see what others have been up to!!

Overwhelmed!

It’s 12:20am on Thursday.  I leave on Monday to visit my family for a week and to leave my son for THREE MONTHS!!!!  And I have a migraine, my house is a mess, and Wild Man does not have all the clothes he needs!  Yes, I am overwhelmed.

And, people, I am letting my son drive across the country without me for THREE MONTHS!!  (insert hyperventilating sounds  here!)  Am I crazy?  Wait, don’t answer that.

I have my notebook on my desk open to the page with Wild Man’s packing list on it, and every time I go by, I see that Wild Man has been adding to it.  Which is actually good, since I only started with the clothes he needed.  Wild Man actually is listing out things like which books and video games he is planning on taking.

I found some lovely skirts at Lands End – and one really cool thing about ordering from Lands End and living where we live is that I can order one day and have them here either the next day or the day after, but I digress – and I ordered a black and a brown skirt.  They are really nice, cotton, ankle length skirts.  No, I’m not super-modest or anything, but when you wear an ankle-length skirt, you can get away with not shaving your legs for an extra day or so.  Anyway, when I got them, I thought I could make do with the brown, although it was more yellow-orange than I like.  On Sunday night, though, I was back on Lands End website and I found that they now had the khaki skirt in my size, so I ordered the khaki and, for good measure, the navy and had PWM return the brown one to Sears (quite convenient, by the way) when he took Rosie Girl to piano on Tuesday.

While they were at Sears, Rosie Girl found a bathing suit for Wild Man, so I actually don’t have to go shopping for Wild Man before we leave.  In a pinch, I can either shop for him in Florida or give the grandparents money to buy him clothes.  The main thing that he needed was a bathing suit so that he can swim as soon as we get to my parent’s house!  Rosie Girl also found herself a lovely suit – and hopefully, her growing has slowed down so that she can get two years of wear out of this one.

I’m a little (OK, a lot) frustrated with my migraines right now.  Unfortunately, we’ve had something like two or three weather systems come through right in a row and they have just done awful things to my head.

On a positive note, I finished Wild Man’s socks.  I’ve started a raglan sweater that I hope looks good because I am making up the pattern myself.  I am also working on a pair of socks and an entrelac headband with some yarn leftover from Christmas projects.

Wild Man went to the Nutrition Site by himself today.  I had a migraine and Rosie Girl was at school because they had a late start.  The folk there really wanted to see him today since it’s his last day before he’ll be gone for a long time.  We took a map that they’ll put on the wall and mark his progress.

Rosie Girl is all excited about dance recital which is in about three weeks.  It’s a bummer that Wild Man will miss it, but we’ll get a DVD for him.  It also sounds like Rosie Girl has finally decided that she’s going to audition for Show Choir next year, but definitely NOT for Madrigals because she only has time for one extracurricular choir.  If she makes it, the summer practice week is the same week that my family is coming to town, so we’ll have to make some arrangements for her to get to some or most of the rehearsals while not missing much family stuff.  It’ll all work out fine despite the teen drama that has already occurred!

PWM has been excellent this week in helping to get things done.  He’s been helping me get laundry taken care of as well as trying to figure out what shopping is essential.  Wild Man is going to be gone for a long time, but Grandma wants him to pack light, so there’s really not much to do until this weekend.  It just feels like there’s more to do than there is.

A certain amount of the overwhelmed feeling is simply from knowing that our “little boy” is going be to away from us for so long.  Last year, he was at camp for a week.  The year before that, he was with my parents for 10 days.  We’ve tried to have families that we trust that our kids can stay with so that PWM and I can have a night or weekend to ourselves every once in a while (especially important when I was working).  But this is much bigger.  So, I’m trying to get used to it.

I never knew my father’s parents – they both had died before I was born.  My mom’s mother died when I was seven.  My mom’s dad stayed with us several times, and I knew him better, but he was rather old – in his 80s – and he died when I was 12.  (My mom was the youngest of 12 children.)  I never had the chance that my children have to get to know their grandparents.  In fact, my kids knew their great-grandmother who just died last year in her 90s.  This opportunity for Wild Man is something that I never had, and he will, I hope, cherish.  He and Grandma will be a lot closer after three months on the road.

I’m sure I’ll still freak out on occasion.  But Wild Man is going to have a blast.  And Rosie Girl and I will have some fun this summer, too.  I want to get my kitchen and dining room painted.  Hopefully, we can get some things to grow in our garden and planters.  It will be good all the way around!

Making Plans

Summer is almost upon us, so it’s time to make all of our vacation plans, right?  We already have our week at Family Camp scheduled, Wild Man’s week at Boy’s Camp scheduled, and a week for my family (parents and brother and his family) to come up here for a visit scheduled.  It would seem that everything is all taken care of.  Not so.

I decided that I wanted to take a short visit to see my parents in May and that I would take Wild Man with me.  I’m in the process of making the airline reservations for that trip.

Grandma (Mr. Math Tutor’s mom) is up here visiting right now and is planning a trip from her home in Tampa across the US through Baton Rouge, Houston, San Antonio, and then up to Monterey, California where Mr. Math Tutor’s sister lives.  She will be leaving the first part of June and asked about Wild Man joining her for part or all of her trip.  Wild Man is thrilled with the idea.  Mr. Math Tutor and I think it’s wonderful, except for the part where we won’t see our son for two months – EEK!

Sooooooooo, Wild Man and I will fly down to South Florida to visit my parents.  (We will be stopping his “regular” schoolwork early and taking him out of public school early this year.)  After a week, I will come back up here.  My parents will get Wild Man to Grandma’s house in Tampa before the first of June.  Wild Man and Grandma will then “hit the road” for two months.  They will definitely be back to Wisconsin by August 12 because Grandma wants to see the Tall Ships in Green Bay on that date.

Sound crazy?  Indeed, it is.  Wild Man is willing to give up Family Camp and Boy’s Camp for this trip.  Rosie Girl isn’t interested in the trip because she’s got plans this summer to write stories with her friends and to work more on her music.  She’s also excited because we told her that she can bring a friend to Family Camp.

Over the next week, Grandma and Wild Man are planning their route, learning to use the GPS, checking websites, and just generally getting excited about the whole thing.  I’ve got to make sure Wild Man has clothes and other things he needs.  Thankfully, Grandma uses Facebook so that they can post pictures and messages while they’re on the road.

It’s gonna be a great summer for everyone!!

P.S.  And Mr. Math Tutor and I are going to paint my dining room and kitchen!!

Lagniappe – The Back Home Edition – May 30, 2009

1. I wore make-up twice this week!  OK, it was for two funerals, but it was still twice in a week!

2. I’ve definitely acclimated to the Great White North.  The heat and humidity of the Deep South did not agree with me this week.

3. To add to the regular heat of the South, the air-conditioning in my parent’s trailer decided to quit working.  During the day, the temperature in the trailer would approach 90 degrees.  I had a migraine Wednesday afternoon and evening and napped in the trailer in that heat.  Ick.  Thankfully, a repairperson came out on Thursday morning and recharged the AC so it was cool for our last day.

4. Of my mother’s eleven sibling who lived to adulthood, only four of them were never divorced.

5. I stand by my assertion that you can tell when you have left the South by the cleanliness of the public restrooms.

6. One of the most useful things that my Aunt S (Uncle B’s widow) received this week was a big bag of Ziploc and/or Rubbermaid containers to hold leftovers.  Friends and church members had brought by so much food that we were storing it in ice chests as well as the fridge.  The extra containers to store leftovers were much appreciated.

7. I had over 1000 items in Google Reader when I got home (since I only checked the computer once while we were gone).  It took me several hours this evening to delete most and star the ones that I want to read.

8. My kids had the first two shows of the dance recital today and tonight.  They’ll be home in the next hour or so.  They have another show tomorrow which Mr. Math Tutor and I will be able to attend – Yippee!

Cracker Barrel Audiobooks

Yes, I have insomnia.  Let’s just get that out there.  I’m blogging at 1:51am.  I figure I’m my most sarcastic at this time of day.  Probably because I don’t have to set a good example for children or something.

But, I did want to tell you folks who may be traveling in the next few months about a great program set up by Cracker Barrel – yes, the restaurant.  We were planning to listen to The Fellowship of the Ring on our trip South, but we found that the library discs were in worse shape than usual.  Our new plan was to just be bored.  And listen to music.  That we’d listened to a zillion times before.  We weren’t terribly happy.

Then, we had lunch at Cracker Barrel.  Don’t ask me where.  They all blend together after a while.  Anyway, they have a big display of audiobooks, which they’ve had before.  This time, though, they had an advertisement that said that we could buy the book, but if we returned it within a week, they would refund all but $3.49 of the purchase price.  The longer you keep the book, the more of your money they keep.  Still, it’s a pretty fair deal.

We decided to get The Half Moon Detective Agency by Eoin Colfer (author of the Artemis Fowl books).  Yes, it’s another book about a preteen. It’s just as funny as the Artemis Fowl books, although the protagonist is not a genius, and just as family friendly.  We finished this book by the time we got to Baton Rouge, so we then got Peter in Scarlett about Peter Pan, the renewal of Captain Hook, and, of course, Wendy and the lost boys.  This is, apparently, the only authorized sequel to Peter and Wendy.  Yet another winner.  Could we be so fortunate again?

Indeed we were – to a certain extent.  We next got  Endymion Spring, a fascinating book about Gutenberg, Fauste, and ancient books.  But, the nearest Cracker Barrel to our house is in Madison, so we had to return the book after the fourth disc – and we were only halfway through.  So, the book is now on hold with our regular library system so that Mr. Math Tutor can read it to the family.

I enjoy Cracker Barrel’s food rather well, and I find it nice to have a sit-down meal in the middle of traveling all day, but the audiobook rental is a real treat.  They do have more than children’s books.  In fact, there were a number of books that I would have enjoyed that were either not kid-appropriate or just not kid-friendly.  In any case, there are fiction and non-fiction, and just about every fiction genre you can imagine.  So, on your next trip, give it a try.  It really helps the miles pass in the states with so many wheat fields!