Last week, I shared this tiny clipping of a picture, which Hilary guessed correctly in one of her 3 choices.
The full picture is below.
Vapor trails can be more than just a Rush album.
And oh! that blue, blue summer sky…
I’ve got a busy week or so ahead of me, so I’m refraining from adding a new What is it? Wednesday picture for now.
Photo taken on the teenager’s 17th birthday
It’s hot here this week, hitting the low 90s, but at least I don’t have to drive 8 hours in an un-air-conditioned truck to the other side of the state and back, nor am I spending my week with hundreds of teenage boys. Why yes, it is scout camp week.
And off they go…
Of course, without the person who wakes up at 0430 to open windows and switch on the whole-house exhaust fan, our house isn’t very cool in the mornings since we don’t have central air conditioning. It’s all about windows and fans.
Four generations of handsome guys
I should probably back up a little and show a few pictures from a little over a week ago, when we all gathered together at the home of my husband’s parents. My father-in-law was having his 80th birthday party.
This family picture is from that evening (baby was sleepy and didn’t want to smile for a camera). It was the first time all 8 of us had been together since January 2nd.
This little piggy…
In the past, there have been many times when I have disliked (or even hated) pictures of me. But now that I’m a grandma? Any picture of Oma with her sweet boy is a good picture in my eyes.
I tried to not be a baby hog, although I don’t know if I succeeded in that endeavor.
I did, however, succeed in jamming my toes into a chair at work last Thursday. Luckily, this is my “good” foot so it isn’t as painful as it could have been.
Those little piggies are sore.
Look at those chubby thighs and that amazing core strength! Babies are awesome.
Just when I thought it would be too quiet around here, The Engineer, The Author, and Little Foot stopped in for a quick visit overnight between a holiday at the lake with friends and heading back to their own home. I could never get too much time with this boy.
Confession: I enjoy time with his parents, too!
His daddy had just finished playing so we gave Little Foot a turn at tickling the ivories.
For the curious, Little Foot is now 7.5 months old. No teeth have popped through those gums, but he loves to eat whatever we are eating. He continues to be a happy, snuggly baby — much like his father was 25 years ago. I am so lucky and blessed to have them only 80 miles away.
Age three, The Scout wanted a dinosaur cake. His parents made one decorated with Cheetos…
His first (but not last!) Cheesy-Puffasaurus birthday cake. And although he doesn’t show it in this photo, he was actually very pleased with his cake.
At 17, The Scout does not want a birthday cake or even a birthday pie! This is because he decided back in January to kick excess sugar out of his diet.** He is leaving in a few hours for a week of Boy Scout camp, so this morning I made him an omelet with sauteed fresh vegetables for his birthday breakfast.
An older picture of The Scout and his grandparents. He’s at least 3 inches taller now.
Last weekend at his grandparents’ house, where we were celebrating his grandfather’s 80th birthday, The Scout and his brothers H-J and The Barefooter each made their own veggie omelets for breakfast. They are no strangers to presentation value, garnishing with an artistic squiggle of ketchup and sides of sliced melon. Extended family was impressed.
My four boys, summer 2000. Last Saturday was the first time the four of them had been together since the week of Christmas. Today that sweet one-year-old baby turns 17 years old.
A week of scout camp may be a challenge for him as he continues to have headaches, but he tells me that it has improved and no longer feels like someone is pressing a hot iron into his scalp! My resident teenager doesn’t complain — just quietly goes about doing what must be done. I’d worry about him going but SuperDad is his Scoutmaster and, as you may recall, is a retired nurse.
Our house is generally pretty quiet; this week it will be too quiet.
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** That’s right, my teenager does not eat candy or cookies or other sweet treats. He eats fresh fruit when he wants something sweet. This is totally his choice, and it fits with his generally healthy lifestyle. If given a choice between whole grain crackers and potato chips of any flavor, he’d choose the crackers. We haven’t had ice cream in the house for more than a month (and even then he wasn’t eating it). I’m proud of him for choosing healthy fuel for his body; at the same time, I’m pretty sure he’s not a normal teenager.
I saw this meme on Facebook and thought I’d share it here.
It’s your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be.
The year was: 1984
1. Did you know your spouse? No
2. Did you car pool to school? I lived 2 blocks away, so I walked/ran (depending how late I was getting out the door) — usually with a cup of coffee in hand.
3. What kind of car did you have? Mom let the kids drive the old 1973 Chevy Impala wagon.
4. What kind of car do you have now? 2006 Kia Sedona minivan
5. It’s Friday night…where were you? If I wasn’t babysitting for someone, I might be hanging out with people from the church youth group.
6. What kind of job did you have in high school? I had some regular babysitting jobs.
7. What kind of job do you have now? Church Administrator (after 22 years as a SAHM)
8. Were you a party animal? No
9. Were you a cheerleader? No
10. Were you considered a jock? No
11. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? I was in band and choir earlier in high school, but at not at this point.
12. Were you a nerd? No. I was, however, dressing in grunge style before it was cool.
13. Did you get suspended or expelled? Nope. Miss Goody-two-shoes here.
14. Can you sing the fight song? I know it from my first high school (older siblings went there and I spent 9th and 10th grades there, too) but I never learned it for my second high school.
15. Who was/were your favorite high school teacher/s? Doc Hansen (English, Creative Writing) and VanKempen (Drama and stage crew)
16. Where did you sit for lunch? Usually in the cafeteria with a few friends. I could go home for lunch but it seemed like a waste of time.
17. What was your school’s full name? Roosevelt High School
18. What was your school mascot? Roughrider (ala Teddy Roosevelt before he became President)
19. If you could go back and do it again, would you? NO.
20. Did you have fun at Prom? Hmmmm… fun? I suppose so. I’m still not really into the events where you dress up and talk to people while loud music is playing. (I have no problem with going to hear a band — I enjoy that — but trying to talk in a crowd? Not so much.)
21. Do you still talk to the person you went to prom with? We’re friends on Facebook but haven’t seen each other in person in many years It’s nice to see pictures of his family.
22. Are you planning on going to your next reunion? The 30-year reunion was the first one I attended for this school. I’d go to another one if it worked out with my schedule.
23.Did you attend your 25th reunion? No. At the time I was only attending the reunions for my first high school, because I have known some of those people since we were 5 years old.
24. Are you still in contact with people from school? Thanks to Facebook, I am now.
25. What are/were your school’s colors? Green and Gold
Here is the picture I shared last week.
Confession: I was hoping someone would guess caramel-marbled brownies!
Janet (from whose now-comatose blog I stole the “What is it? Wednesday” meme) guessed it was toast, and Carolyn guessed it was a “cross-section of a malted milk ball.”
Unfortunately for all of us, this isn’t food unless we are termites.
Melissa made three guesses in a single comment:
Rye bread!
Tree bark?
Snake skin!
As you can see here, it’s a small cross-section of bark from a felled tree.
Now if I can just get that old Ozzy Osbourne song out of my head!
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Now here is this week’s picture for your guessing pleasure. Please be very specific in your guesses! As always, bonus points are given for creativity.
Below is the resident teenager’s Christmas wish list from 2015. In the heading, he noted that it was “mostly sub twenty” — meaning less than $20 per item.
My memory is as fuzzy and out-of-focus as this picture of the Christmas tree.
You’d probably like to know what we ended up getting him for Christmas. I’m curious myself! On Christmas Day, I was one month out of surgery for my trimalleolar fracture and on some pretty strong pain medicine. I do know that we are not the proud owners of a horse and stable. 🙂
I was curious enough to look up previous orders on my Amazon account (the only way that any Christmas shopping got done). He received, in part, some new running gear. The fact I still have Amazon Prime is proof that those were some pretty strong pain meds; I forgot to turn off our free 30-day trial and ended up paying $99 for the entire year. Never mind that I was too busy to shop the special Prime Day sale on July 12th.
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I obviously made last week’s “What is it? Wednesday” picture too easy. Here is the full picture of the dragonfly:
This week I’ll try to challenge you a bit (or perhaps not) with this picture:
Please leave your best guess in the comments below. Bonus points for wild and crazy details!
Niagara Falls, August 2009
I live with two opposing desires: the desire to create and the desire to be free from the weight of too much stuff, of everything that holds me back from spontaneity. The tiny house movement, minimalism, the popularity of the Konmari method and Marie Kondo’s book about tidying have infiltrated my brain. I think of how lovely it could be, living in a small space only surrounded with things that bring me joy. The pure lack of stuff would surely enable me to live more freely, to gather up my minimal possessions on short notice and take off on adventures. Or would it?
Google & Pinterest for the image win
Several plastic bins are filled with yards of colorful fabric purchased on sale and waiting under my worktable to become quilts; the new-to-me BERNINA is still under its cover, ready to replace the old, simple workhorse Sears model (which will continue to be used by the rest of the family). It’s been there since I broke my ankle seven months ago. I have filled more than a few acrylic boxes with organized displays of beads, just waiting for my creativity to turn them into earrings or lanyards. I taught my children that books are special friends and should be treated as such, which probably explains our full bookshelves despite multiple cross-country moves and routine purging of unnecessary items to keep below our weight limits.
Ye old bedside table overfloweth
And yet, I hear the siren song of minimalism: clean, dust-free surfaces that gleam with openness and possibility. Those images whisper to me that my house could look like this, too, if I would just get rid of stuff and tidy up my life. I can be overwhelmed by the piles that need my attention, those things that weren’t put in their proper places because I wasn’t quite done using them… two months ago. There are more than a few items that were set down on or near my worktable because I needed to figure out where they should live, and apparently they are imprisoned in the homeless encampment where I left them because the clutter grows into wretched, visual walls that keep me from doing anything. I am weighed down and immobilized.
The connection between these two extremes is perfectionism and self-diagnosed ADD. Once upon a time, I thought that a perfectionist was one who kept a perfectly clean and clutter-free house — and if that was so, then the minimalist lifestyle would be the answer. If I wiped the slate clean, there would be so little to care for on a daily basis that it would be simple to keep everything nice and neat and perfect. But I have since learned that a procrastinator like me is also a perfectionist. I will begin a project and fail to complete it because I don’t have enough time (supposedly) to do it perfectly. And yes, time management might be an issue here as well. I become distracted by other projects, other needs, and set what I am doing aside to finish at another time. Another project is set down right next to or on top of it, and another one, and soon I have overwhelming clutter on top of, under and around my worktable, rendering it useless.
I vacillate between enjoying my hobbies and the paraphernalia that comes with each of them — the scrapbooks, the paper, the beads, the fabric, the many supplies needed to turn vision into reality that can be held, touched, and felt — and the guilt that comes with owning so much stuff: things that no one else in my household seems to care about or enjoy. I’m the lover of the scrapbooks. I’m the one who spends untold hours looking at photographs, working with paper to bring a book together that tells our family’s story in color. My scrapbooks are simple in design (nothing fancy here) and enable me to look back at events and remember details. Since my husband rarely looks at them (and my sons even less often) they really are for me, not the family.
Beading is another hobby in which I have invested time and money. The small clear boxes have compartments filled with semi-precious gemstones, round containers hold colorful vintage Venetian seed beads, and other small bins keep Swarovski and Precosia crystals separate from less costly glass beads. I have less guilt over this colorful and pleasing collection due to the earrings and lanyards I sell and make for my own use; however, I freely admit that I own much more than I will ever use. The call of the Pretty! and Sparkly! is a strong one, even for this not-so-girly female.
Some of my crafting supplies have come into my life as fads that quickly fade away. Counted cross-stitch, wreath-making, and stamping readily come to mind as examples, and there is no doubt that some of these supplies could improve my life by simply going away. I’d have more space, less clutter, and less guilt when I look at them because I haven’t been using them. I still use a few stamps, but most of the items in those bins are neglected and unloved. These are the items that Marie Kondo writes about, things that were once thought to be useful but no longer “spark joy” — things I hang onto because I spent money on them many years ago.
I enjoy the process of creating, gazing at colorful beads and fabric and paper, deciding which ones to use. I find pleasure in planning and envisioning a completed crafting project. I love having a scrapbook to look back at events through the eyes of the photographer (usually me). I’m realizing that while I am not what I consider to be an actual artist, I have an artist’s heart. I dream of creating something of beauty and I see possibility where others see a mess that needs cleaning. A blank surface is a creative void, begging for fulfillment and lacking inspiration. Emptiness on walls and surfaces is, to me, a cry of loneliness.
I read this recently on Maximum Middle Age:
Having stuff has never kept me from having experiences, or feeling joy. On the contrary, my things are a primary source of joy in my life, more meaningful than any expanse of white wall, any patch of “negative space.” My things are talismans, giving me luck and guarding against forgetfulness. They have brought me joy. They are worth keeping.
This is where I find myself: on a tenuous slackline walk between tangible reminders of past joys and the illusion of minimalist ease. On one end is the abode with clean, clear surfaces, no excesses, no clutter and, supposedly, no guilt; on the other end is a house filled with wellsprings of creativity and memory-keepers that also inevitably bring clutter. And I bounce in the middle, seeking to make a home and a life I love.
photo taken at the 2013 Slackline World Cup tour in Spokane, WA
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon.**
Wait, no — that’s not right.
I’m not really sure what to call the past 2 weeks. At times it has been joyous, but it has also been challenging in an unpleasant way. But first, the good stuff:
I’ve gotten to visit the next generation family twice over a 4-day window. I visited on a Saturday nearly 2 weeks ago . While The Scout and SuperDad were off Riding the Hiawatha, I had the privilege of riding with my little buddy. It had been 6 weeks since my last visit and I felt about three weeks overdue for grandson snuggles.
I cannot get enough of this sweet boy. SuperDad hadn’t seen him in person since Mother’s Day, so the two of us drove to their town again last Wednesday. I love seeing my husband being a grandpa.
Listening to Daddy’s voice coming out of the tube at the park… It’s so fun to see Little Foot clearly working his brain to figure out his world.
We were chillin’ at the park (literally, we were keeping cool at the end of a hot day). The Author, who loves all birds and had at one time wanted to become a veterinarian specializing in bird care, enjoys feeding the ducks. And then she caught one!
Little Foot was curious at first but then became jealous of the creature in Mommy’s arms where he rightfully belonged. It was clearly bedtime for baby.
Little Foot is 7 months old today. Time is passing by so quickly and his babyhood is already slipping away. His mama sent me this picture just a few days ago — Standing!
So now, let’s discuss the other young member of the family, our resident teenager, who has had a couple of painful lessons in life in the past month. As you might have read in yesterday’s post, he had his bicycle stolen a few weeks ago. I have sympathy for his plight; at the same time, I had mentioned a time or three that leaving the bike overnight at the school was unwise because a single bike in a deserted area was an invitation for thieves. Granted, the bike was stolen in broad daylight, but the school grounds were empty which is the same premise. So, bike gone, lesson learned. (I hope.)
Wait, did I use the word LESSON? Ah… this was the school year of taking an online Spanish course. The Scout struggled through this course, not really understanding much of anything. He’s our last kid and we are pretty hands-off at this point because he has been so responsible. What we didn’t know was that this was a “homegrown” course for the school district and by the end of the year, a majority of the students had dropped it, were failing it or in danger of failing it. We turned to a neighbor for help — he had taught high school Spanish before he retired — but even he couldn’t understand what the English directions were asking the students to do. With the neighbor’s help, The Scout took a “pass” on the course, scraping by with a D-. Now he is trying to catch up with students who took Spanish 1 in the classroom by taking a 6-week remedial course online for summer school. Unfortunately, this course began one day before said teenager left for a week of scout camp and will end with another week of scout camp , leaving him 4 weeks to do the work. There’s a strong chance he may end up repeating the course in a classroom in September. So that’s painful lesson #2.
The Scout went off to Rendezvous with minimal supplies. Many items were strictly forbidden due to the fact that they hadn’t yet been invented and/or in use during fur trapping 1830 North America. The boys waded to an island with their burlap sacks, built and slept in tepees, kept mosquitoes away with smoke, swam with beavers, and generally did things that mothers shouldn’t know about. It’s the sort of week where scout safety is quietly set aside for realism. I’m pretty sure the district office allows this to operate on a don’t ask/don’t tell policy. Our young man learned some useful skills and had a wonderful time. After picking him up on Saturday, we drove home with the windows open.
It wasn’t all mud and beaver dams and mosquitoes; they also did sewing and bead work, shot with black powder, and learned a lot of history.
Painful lesson #3: It hurts when you fall out of a tree. Sunday afternoon he took a walk through the park — and because he is a teenage boy, he saw a tree and decided to climb it. He was 23 feet in the air when the branch broke. He landed on his back, blacked out briefly from the pain, got up and walked home. Ice and pain pills got him through the evening. Amazingly, he did not hit his head or break anything. Or die. The CT scan was “normal.”
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“Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” – Garrison Keillor
I have discovered something about myself over the past 30 years, that when the truly frightening events occur — when the kid falls 2+ stories and lands on his back, when that same kid chokes and has to be thoroughly suctioned when he’s 6 hours old, when another kid totals the car, or I hit a deer at 50 mph –all those times and more, I enter a state of calm that is almost frightening in itself. It may appear that I am lackadaisical or don’t have a true understanding of the situation. It’s quite the opposite; I understand all too well.
Spokalulu 