I’m typing and deleting and typing and deleting and typing and deleting. The Olympics are demanding my full attention.
Summary: Snow cones. Natatorium. We love summer.
The women’s gymnastics commentators just described an American as having “all attack and no fear.” That’s my new goal for high pressure situations.
Now back to the Olympics everyone!
There are some subtle points for Rush and Tate to eventually master in order to become functioning men, as opposed to wild animals in clothes: napkins in laps, dressing for church, spending time alone and being content with themselves without always needing the tv or computer for company, behaving in a library. As libraries are both free and air conditioned, that last one is time sensitive.
It’s hard for me to come to terms with the fact that we’re the very wildest people in the library, but here we are. I can’t leave the library without being flustered and sweating. The first step isn’t even hoping for them to sit quietly and flip through one book at a time; I just want the raucous games of hide and seek in the stacks to stop. They have plenty of time to run out energy outside and just need to work on calming down in certain settings. Maybe they’re just really stimulated by all the books…? I understand how seeing books stacked to the ceiling and knowing you can take any of them home would make a person’s adrenaline skyrocket.
We have a really great library. When we first moved here, I was disappointed by how small it was, but over time I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of material. The librarians really know their market, because I have never looked for a book that couldn’t be located at some branch of the Brazoria County Library System. Typically I’m getting embarrassingly stereotyped books for my demographic – craft books, cookbooks, novels. But even when Trent or I seek out something obscure, it’s there. Well done librarians.
And thanks to the library, I’m getting ready to settle in with John Irving’s newest novel. I also have a $3 bottle of wine that I bought because, hey $3.
It’s called Cul-de-Sac, and what do you know, that’s my street, too. It’s actually swill, but along with the Indigo Girls, it’s is setting a nice, mellow vibe for my evening.
For years I’ve been baffled by the throw pillow dilemma. I wanted new pillows for our bedroom, but it appears that everyone else in my price range has completely different taste. Making pillows was going to be fairly expensive as well, once I paid for yards of heavier fabric and stuffing. Then the other day I was –shocker- browsing through Target and found the perfect solution: cloth napkins. I liked the color and pattern; the fabric is both substantial and already cut into perfect squares.
I cut apart the old pillows that came with our couches for their stuffing and in one afternoon I feel like I turned around our bedroom with four pillows for less than the price of one. It appears that we’re only a few coats of paint and new curtain rods away from a ‘finishing’ our bedroom.
My sister told me that in the early stages of a friendship, she and another woman went out for Mexican food. According to Casey, when her friend ordered cheese enchiladas for lunch and finished them, she knew in that moment that they would be real friends. I had a similar, but opposite, moment recently when I was telling a friend about making pillows from cloth napkins. When she seemed to think it was the most ridiculous thing she ever heard, I knew we’d reached our limit of compatibility.
Especially as I looked around my house and realized that the lounging pillows in the living room are made out of dish towels. Oh, and our kitchen curtains were once dish towels as well.
I’ve long put off sorting through our pictures, but I finally got started tonight. Of course that was about 10 minutes ago and I have already been distracted by The Cheeks.
Tate 2012
Rush 2010
If my genes have anything to say about it, they’ll keep a good portion of those cheeks through adulthood.
July seems like a good time to review my New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 and evaluate.
So, resolution #1, Eat in the Dining Room More: Fail. If anything I’m getting worse at that because half the time when we have friends over I forget and set the kitchen table. I’ll keep trying.
#2, Learn Celsius and Kilometers: There’s still at least 5 months to get started on that.
#3, Fix Laundry Room: Done! Although Trent did most of the work by building and painting the giant pedestal. And I adapted by plans by not painting the laundry room because that was going to be the world’s biggest pain.
#4, Once A Month Grocery Shopping: That was a two month time-sucking ordeal that I do not wish to revisit. Planning out a month of meals and a making a giant grocery list took Forever and shopping once a month means you’re not taking advantage of any sales. Plus you still have to go to the store once a week. I’m not sure how people who do that are saving any money. They’re certainly not saving time, and that’s confirmed by someone who goes to the grocery store at least three times a week.
#5, Get the Breakfast Dishes Off the Kitchen Table by 10 AM: Either it happens or it doesn’t, but I would say most days they at least make it to the sink. I didn’t say breakfast dishes clean by 10 AM.
#6, Overall Get Organized: I got a new make-up bag after 12 years, so thumbs up. A few other things have turned around too like…under the kitchen sink and my bathroom sink…and………..this one’s really more of a lifestyle change. Baby steps.
I did get a really great organizational book at the book sale, written by a woman who I’m guessing has 12 cats and forced herself to be organized, which makes it a superb book. I can’t take organizational tips from someone who is naturally organized because it’s hard to match mind grapes with them. I read this book with a pen and marked all the helpful tips, so I think that’s going to help. One of her tips for keeping a clean purse is to make sure all your random make-up is in a cosmetic bag, which oddly enough, I don’t do. I need to either make one or stop wasting time lusting over the Marimekko poppies. I kind of think a purse with that bag would never hit the ground; surely I would always hang it up on the coat rack, and with those bright colors nothing would ever get me down. I’m 100% sure that isn’t the way life works and a $75 make-up bag isn’t my reality, so I bought a zipper foot for my sewing machine today.
Those were lame resolutions anyway.
Oh well, always onward. If I would have thought it through more in January, I would have listed the fun goals that I’m actually meeting, like Go To The Pool As Much As Possible. I did meet my 4th of July goal:
Sometime in the January I added DREAM BIG as my personal theme for the year. My brother-in-law claimed that I borrowed that from Disney and am somehow manipulating that into a vacation (first part false, second part half true) but it’s more than that. I’m an adult and I can make things happen, so why not? I’m not quite sure how that’s working out, because I’ve resolved myself to the fact that bees are not happening until we’re at least through with newborn babies. I did get a little chicken fever the other day though when I sat on a neighbor’s back porch holding one of her chickens and petting it like a knobby-stick footed kitten. I need to wait that one out for awhile though, as most of my pioneer ideas don’t stick very long once I remember that I would have been a terrible pioneer. On the other hand, the feral cat population of our backyard is currently at an unprecedented zero, so this might be the time. Trent could be easily swayed because I can tell he wants to build a chicken coop. I need to find out what the life span of a chicken is.
Okay, it’s 7-20 years. I was guessing 3. I’m going to dream big about something else.
Trent and I once had a conversation with a priest friend who told us that there are certain “crisis years” in any marriage: year 1, year 3, year 7, and when your last child leaves for college. Today is our 8th anniversary, so crisis averted! Year 7 is supposedly the year when you get bored with each other and Fr. Price’s advice was to find a shared hobby. I’m not sure that we did that specifically, as the sailboat at this point in our lives is more of a Trent hobby, but I think we’re on the right track. At least we spent the better part of the past 2 years talking about what hobby to pick, so that at least gave us something to discuss. I think we’ve kept it interesting.
We always try to take a picture on our anniversary, freezing one moment to compare to the previous years where we inevitably look like babies. That’s us tonight at our celebratory dinner at Lupe Tortilla, and as we realized during the meal, not our first anniversary dinner at that restaurant. I mean, they have really good fajitas. Plus if you go at little kid dinner time, 5:30, it’s still happy hour.
What amazes us both more than being married for 8 years is that next month we will have been at our church for 8 years. There are a few things that make me really feel like an adult in life, but knowing that we found a church together, joined, and have been members through joy and absolute calamity, makes me really feel like we’ve reached a new level of adulthood.
Trent, I’m still happy to be married to you and, if anything, it seems like an ever better decision now than it did 8 years ago.
Knowing Trent, and knowing that blobs exist, it has been my longtime dream to bring the two together.
Success!
Our family spent last week volunteering at Camp Allen. The college students, high school students, camp staff, and other volunteers really keep the camp running, I was just reprising my role as “extra adult” and for the first time ever, sharing the week with my hubby. Our responsibilities consisted of being a responsible adult presence on the campsite. Rush and Tate were along for the excitement. If only I had a video of them dancing in the dining hall, I wouldn’t need to say anything else to prove how much they loved the week.
The theme for the week was WIPE OUT, so we kind of asked for it with the rain. There was more rain at camp last week than I have seen during any other week in my entire summer camp history. Our campsite had great staff who made the most of it – what’s a kid going to remember forever, a trip to the pool or the mud fight that replaced it?
Rush put some major miles on the bikes this week. The campers just got used to throwing high fives as he drove circles around them during arts and crafts. He also talked Trent into tying the bikes together with lanyard string so he could tow Tate around.
The low point of the week was when Tate fell face first down the stairs and we thought his nose was broken. At least the nurse was just a radio call away and my pediatrician aunt was available to confirm that he was okay. He’s healing nicely, thank you God.
Having two small children at camp was actually much harder than I expected. Not hard in any real sense, like thermodynamics or being in the army, but hard like I spending the week at summer camp in Texas and only putting on my bathing suit once. And even then I only stayed in the pool for about eight minutes. What made it hard wasn’t so much the extra work at meals or watching the kids (except around the lake – that was nerve-racking) but missing some of my favorite parts of camp while my less-than-favorite parts remained.
The trick to taking little kids to camp is that taking care of them meant that I ended up skipping the times set aside for just being with God, like Compline, and then replaced them with lounging around eating Oreos and Starbursts and gossiping. Oreos and Starbursts and gossip eventually made my body physically hurt. You can easily gorge yourself on candy while your children are sleeping, but you can’t leave them alone in a cabin to go to praise and worship. Then my mom and sister started going to bed early so I ended up spending my evenings hiding in bed reading with a flashlight so I wouldn’t get sucked into helping with first aid, aka giving Band-Aids. I ended up going to bed earlier at camp than I do at home. That might be a first, not just for me, but for anyone.
If one of the benefits of being adult is knowing thyself, and the quest to know thyself, I know that I’m not really a camp person in the traditional sense. The weird thing is that I’ve never really liked camp things, like ropes course for example, but I always loved Camp Allen. I loved it and and love it. I love the holiness of the place and the people and so many other things about it. I don’t like being in a grubby t-shirt day after day and I don’t enjoy the feeling when you think a drop of water is running down your skin, only to remember that you’re at camp, so you check it out and of course it’s not water, it’s a bug. It’s not news to me that I dislike capture the flag type games but will tolerate them as a tradeoff for relationships and God’s presence. I just never realized how hard camp would be without those holy moments.
I started to feel like myself as we got closer to home, and as I reentered my regular life I recognized how uncomfortable I had felt at times. I took all our laundry, which smelled drive-with-the-windows down bad, like a boys cabin, to the washateria today to get it all over with at once. The music playing in the washateria was jazzy gospel and when the one song came on that I knew and liked, I had the God moment I was seeking all week. “If we are faithless, He remains faithful.”* I may have missed the Wednesday night Eucharist at the lake, but God’s not going to abandon me because I’m in a different stage of life than I was as a high school camp counselor.
Also I love laundromats. They smell like dryer sheets, there’s plenty of time to read, and you leave with everything clean and organized, no small feat in any other circumstances. Plus they’re warm without being stuffy and a little overly personal, as everyone’s underwear is stacked in plain view.
Rush did not want to leave camp. He fell asleep last night on the deck because, “I just want to look at the cabins.” He was planning out where he’s going to sleep (top bunk) when he’s big enough to come with his friends. He also wants Tate in his cabin.
The sweetest moment of the week was when the nurse asked Rush is he wanted to go on a ride in her golf cart later in the week. He said yes and as she turned to walk away, he called, “Can Tate come? Can my brother Tate come?” It melts my heart when those two get along, which is why I should have held back from periodically fighting with my sister in front of my mother during the week. But we love each other too and she, as usual, made me laugh to the point of crying. She’s my Tate.
If Rush and Tate ever get a summer job at Camp Allen, I’m sending these pictures:
Tate taking a bath in a baby pool in The Pit and…
Rush on the last morning of camp in his nametag and pajamas.
Here’s something that’s not like riding a bike: basketball. The adults (ages 29-60) started with HORSE and eventually switched to taking turns shooting baskets from anywhere and just trying to see how many shots we could each make out of 10. The overall average was 3.
As usual, a posed family picture is elusive. I didn’t think about trying until the very last day and at that point we were all exhausted.
It was one of the best weeks of camp ever, but I think Casey put it the best when she said, “I feel like I just observed a great week of camp.” We’ve both had enough weeks of participating at Camp Allen to put in some observation time to allow Trent, Rush, Tate, and Carolena (my niece) to have wonderful experiences. It was 100% worth it to be able to see Trent act like a camper. He was everything I’ve ever imagined he would be at camp: defeating the Iceberg, doing flips off the diving board and teaching the campers that can openers make bigger splashes than cannon balls, getting his Nalgene bottle filled with coke at Canteen.
I wish Trent and Tate and Rush could all write posts from their perspectives of the week. I think that the fact that they’re all conked out asleep speaks for itself. I’m so thankful the bonus experience of Camp Allen summer camp as an adult with –my personal favorite part- my husband and children so I don’t have to be homesick.
*2 Timothy 2:13 Check out the Episcopalian quoting the Bible.
It’s good to have goals in life, so I’ve recently decided to catch up on all the superhero movies leading up to The Avengers. Thor, done; Captain America on the Fourth of July; Ironman right now. It’s looking like this might be a movie that I should pay some attention, so please excuse any typos beyond the usual misuse of commas and its and it’s.
Our friend Nick came over today to teach me how to restring a ukulele, which was surprisingly simple compared to its intimidation factor.
After tuning it and practicing Aloha ‘Oe, I noticed that the soothing sounds of the uke had an unexpected effect on Rush.
In the words of Elliot Garfield: “Music is nature’s sedative.” He slept on the kitchen floor for at least 30 minutes, which combined with Tate’s nap, gave me time to get reacquainted with the piano as well.
Changing the subject: We were at the beach last weekend where it was rainy and seaweedy, so we went out to the the jetty. I really enjoyed the sign before venturing out on to the rocks:
It’s nice to go somewhere that’s not either totally blocked by handrails or closed to the public. Just be careful kiddos.
