Living on a Country Hill

This hill could be a lonely place - I think when she was young, when Jack was a small boy, Rubilee must have found this windy hilltop too solitary at times after the bustle of living in Dallas.

I don't much think about the solitude here except to savor it.  I would not wish to lose the grass rustling in the wind  and that woodpecker's insistant tapping, the coyotes' yips and the owls' questioning calls over the lake.  I resent the sight of the neighbor's roofs glinting away off over the pasture.  I suppose I am not good at social niceties,  at chatting and small talk. This hill is my refuge from the noisesome teenagers and the hurry up of the day.

But what if I did not go to work, what if my day was just the farm?  Would that wind become tiresome?  Perhaps.  I don't usually feel house bound even in summer months, though last year I had the garden and spent such a lot of time working on school prep.  But I also have Rubilee.  I only go up once or twice a day, but I could go more if I needed an adult voice to Balance Bella's chatter.  When I go, I can drop in and pop back out, or I can stay while we hash out the latest book we both read or analyze Ree Drummond's recipe or lament Harold's stubborn ways.   She is 83, 84 soon.  She is the mother of the man I love, but has become such good company for me.  Last time I went shopping for fun, I cajoled her into going with me.  It had been forever since we had a day out. We were overdue for some girliness without man or child to infringe on our time.  It was a quiet day, and a short one since she tires easily, but we enjoyed browsing the colors of spring that were lining the walls of the shops and we did a fair amount of people watching and critiquing over lunch.  I love these days because I always get stories of Jack's childhood, and even better, her own childhood and her time as a young woman at Texas Tech. That day she told me about the clothes she used to wear and her roommates when she was working as a researcher, of the first book she bought for the boys after she married Harold, and of growing up in oil patch towns.

Rubilee had a hard weekend.  Her blood pressure was erratic - she worries and it becomes more erratic and she feels worse so worries more  and it just becomes a cycle.  Jack took her to the ER Saturday and it looks like she will need some tests to iron out and fix what is wrong, but she is stable at the moment. I know there will be some doctor visits in the weeks to come starting today.  I always think of Harold as being the fragile one  but I am reminded that they are both just so small, so frail, and so old.  I know death is inevitable.  I know we are here to help Rubilee and Harold as they more and more are no longer able to fend for themselves.  Right now there is a delicate balance of them mostly living life independently in their own home (if  somewhat limited in scope by their health) while we live on the edge, taking care of the things that escape them.  Delicate, threatened by every illness, by failing eye sight, by a simple stumble. 

The weekend was worrisome for us all.  I know Jack frets.  I didn't fret so much as I did just ponder their mortality and that of my Grandparents who are in very similar circumstances, but too far away to help.  I do know that am not ready to think about losing either of them.  This hill will be too lonely then.  

Moving forward and looking back and conflicted

I feel like there is so much going forward in parts if my life and not nearly enough in others.

At school, I am already dreading giving up a week in July for AP conference . . . If I get a spot that is.  I am wondering if I can manage the Grand Lake Cousin gathering and AP and this alignment thing Katrina has started.  Part of me says the alignment is more important.  Part of me says, these are cousins you have seen twice for a space of an hour in five years - we have a chance for a non funeral gathering and I love that.  I was looking at my cousin's pinterest page and I just thought, wow, she has so much grown up stuff on her page.  How is it that my house still looks like a college kid lives here, and Chelsea seems to have fallen out of Sotuhern Living?  This makes me wonder if I know my family so little,  that I have so little in common with them any more, that there isn't a point.

But I am also looking forward to learning more, doing more with AP, growing more as a teacher.  This year was a major growth year for me as a teacher, though I still see areas where there was not enough improvement.  But instead of school,  I really want to be spending my time working on the place, building green houses, working toward a farm.  It will take serious money, money that isn't on the table right now.  Definitely not all the forward motion I had hoped for by now.  I had hoped by now we would have at least an irrigation system built and plans for cover crops in place.

In a different way, I feel like I am failing Bell that I didn't get her to play soccer this spring.   She didn't fit with Girl Scouts and I had hoped soccer might be her niche for now.  She just has so few good friends, none that I know well enough to sanction slumber parties and outings.  On the other hand, I wonder where the time for soccer would have come from.  We are trying to do speech work several times a week, work on some math skills, 20 minutes of spelling a night, reading. Oh, and don't forget about the in-laws.   On weeks that Jack is gone, I usually don't slip into a quiet mode until Bell goes to bed.  This is just a muddle.

We are moving forward in a positive way food wise.  I have convinced Jack to try some better eating habits.  I had thought to do Paleo, but after a very expensive visit to the healthfood store, it may be out of reach, at least until we get chickens.  Grass fed beef was crazy high, as was butter and cheese.  I expected it to be high, but it was crazy high.  I may have to compromise, choosing to use non gmo  flours ( l am trying almond and coconut) to bake with, using as much grass fed meats as possible, but also being realistic about money and choosing some regular meats.  There is no way Bell will give up dairy so this may become better eating instead of perfect eating.  I just keep thinking that there is more we could do food wise to help Jack's leg and spine heal faster.  That made my cooking habits sound dreadful.  They aren't - we mostly eat real food, prepared by me - but they could be better.

I think I feel a little panicky about our health and our farm because we aren't so young anymore.  Jack will be 48 on Tuesday.  I remember that youthful charmer turning 31.  He is a better man these days, definitely a kinder, gentler man.  I attribute that to Bella.  But youthful?  Neither of us can claim that these days.  At 38, I wish I had the energy of five years ago.

I think I most look forward to spring right now.  It is so warm out today.  I have made trips to the clothesline in just a sweatshirt.  I actually put away our gloves.  I need the sunshine to improve my mood.  I felt crappy all week, walking about in a Niquil  haze or not breathing.  I even got impatient with Rubilee.  I at least saved my muttering until I was home, but I was frustrated because I usually manage to very patient with my in laws.

Today, because spring taunts me in this sunshine, I will hang clothes in the line.  I will make some healthy snacks and muffins, some that I can freeze, so Jack won't be tempted by junk.  I will prep a s'mores tiramisu for his birthday dessert.  I will wrap a gift.  I will pray about things to come, pray for wisdom in making choices, grace in knowing where to expend my energies.

Never Mind Banning, I Want a Burning

I am not a book banner.  I have had long drawn out debates with my AP kids  . . and my grandmother . . . about the danger of banning books.  I extol things like literary merit and push the idea of it being left up to the reader . . . I ask if they have actually read the book they want banned or just the excerpted piece someone presented out of context.

And then Bella brought home a book last year that made me a bit nutty.  It was the first in the Magic Tree House set and my red pen was itching to write all over it.  I was still reading to her more than she was reading to herself, so I simply edited out all those fragments.  I made it past the book and the series improved.  She has read several since then and I have no issues with them.

She has brought home many more  less than stellar choices from the library, all quite popular, all a bit lacking. I had no fits.  While I may introduce her to good books, while I may take more pleasure in discussing an old favorite with her, I don't bad mouth the rest. I don't have to enjoy comics.  If she wants to read books about dinosaur facts, that is fine.  I want her exploring all kinds of books, getting her own feel for what she likes.  Sometimes, it is about reading for fun, reading for silly pleasure like when we read Skippy Jon Jones.  I don't expect it to all be from the Newberry shelf.

But today she brought home a Junie B.  Jones book.  I am sure I am about to trample on someone's favorite childhood series, but that was drivel.  I get that a 5 year old was the narrator. I get that 5 year olds have an interesting sense of logic.  5 was only two years ago for Bell.  I have not forgotten.  However, I am not about to read a book to my kid that uses thinked or runned over and over again. I am a lover of the 5 year old brain - I love Ramona as much now as I did when I first met her.  I just cannot handle reading a book that has been so far 1/8th bad grammar.  Bell rarely uses words like that, but she says that I shouldn't judge those writers because their mothers weren't English teachers.

Okay.  Burning.  Banning.  That might be a bit of  overkill.  Maybe I am just having a fit after having graded too many badly written papers.  Somewhere my kids learned to speak and write like Junie B.  Yes, they are in high school.  No, they surely are not still reading Junie B.  However, they write like they do still consume her books on a regular basis.  I know, I know, this is environmental.  When kids grow up with people who have poor grammar, they in turn have poor grammar.  But why on earth would we want to purposefully fill their brains with more bad examples?  Why aren't there more E.B. Whites and L.M. Montgomeries in the world?  What has happened to great kids' literature?

I know there are some writers out there.  I know Jen Tucker has a book out.  My little sis ought to publish hers.  This is a call to arms, a call to enchant the young readers we nurture - we should be making bookworms and bibliophiles of them all, not poor writers in some future sophomore class.  Write more good books!

Waiting on the Weather

It seems so much of this winter has been waiting to see what the weather does, and here we are again.

Bella and I made grocery run in the morning - I made sure we hit Walmart before 9 before the Saturday masses showed up.    We were going to do it after school yesterday but Bell had a melt down about being hungry and tired while I dealt with a parent after school.  A melt down before Walmart is just not a good beginning so we came home.  Today was good though.  We both woke up in a good mood and managed to each buy new sneakers after the grocery buying.  Bell even asked to try on clothes in Academy.  That has never happened before.

My menu for the week includes lots of pots of soup and beans - cold weather simmering things, though really, it all depends on Jack.    He is supposed to come home on Monday, but he might be getting sick or he might get stuck up there in the weather. I just don't cook the same when it is just me.  For now we are in limbo, waiting to see how he feels.  He might have just been stiff from being out in the cold and in the truck all day yesterday, but he is not at a 100% today.   And then we will also have to see how much the weather deteriorates and how quickly.

Spring soccer sign ups are Monday . . . I have no idea if they will have them if the weather indeed is bad, but it know I have a little one who wants to play again.  I should have gone to last week's sign up  . . . But I was waiting until Jack was home so we could divide the chores up.  Hard to get it all done and have time to go back into town.

And then there is school.  I really need a day to stay home and grade.  Don't you dare suggest that is what the weekend is for.  The weekend will surely involve grading, but a multitude of mom tasks (like laundry and cookie baking with my child) beckon as well.  So yes, I really need to grade that 9 inch deep stack of papers that has been turned in since Wednesday.  But I really don't want to miss school.  I have lesson plans made.  There are projects scheduled and iPad labs reserved.

Speaking of lessons, I had my AP kids do a version of speed dating with rhetoric and lit  terms.  Everyone used the iPad labs to research a term and build a mini-lesson over the term.  Then the kids rotated around the room, hooking up with a new partner every 7 or 8 minutes.  In those minutes they taught each other their terms and then moved on until everyone had heard every lesson.  This sounds like no big deal, but it was a big deal for my quiet kids who suddenly were willing to talk as much as my show offs.  My hesitant kids shared with my confident kids.  They questioned and explained and looked like they were having so much fun.  I am not really good with fun lessons that actually teach, so this was a big deal.   It was a vacation from my stressing over getting them to take the AP exam and whether or not they will pass.

Anyway, we are in limbo.  Will it snow?  Will we make it to church?  I am pretty sure church will be a no go and a I will be hunkered down with Bell.  I am really willing to flow with all of it as long as Jack gets home well.

Switching In

Every other week, Monday is the best day of the week.  The odd weeks, it is the worst day of the week.  Right now, Jack is working one week on, one week off and Monday is switch day.  Today he is  switching home.

I would love to say I already have dinner in the crockpot, but I don't - but it is already planned.  Pancakes and sausage don't work well in the crockpot and Bella asked that tonight be breakfast night.

I do have a clean house, a bed with clean sheets, and a reasonably stocked fridge for him to come home to. This is a thing with me.  I do not keep a messy house, but I will admit that by Friday night things are a bit cluttered.  By then there is laundry waiting, there is detritus on my desk from our home work of the week, the regular dust, sweep, mop routine is due.  But we always start the new week with a freshly cleaned house.  It makes me feel calmer going into Monday and I need all the help I can get dealing with Mondays.

 Sunday nights are my bad nights.  Last night my brain was fizzing with the new stuff I was going to do with my regular juniors as they start Gatsby this week and the new stuff I will be doing with Of Mice and Men with the sophomores next week. New stuff is exciting, fun, and re-energizes me, but it means I have to plan more, things will be in flux as I see that one chapter is suddenly an extra day longer or 15 min shorter with the new approach.  Mid OMAM planning, my brain abruptly switched to plotting a mini- AP lit and rhetoric term boot camp I want to do with the Comp and Lang class.  I have a whole week to stew on that, though I plan to devote some serious brain power to the idea during today's staff development meetings.  There is also a sense of dread knowing that by mid week I will have 75ish essays to grade.  So anyway, a clean house provides a sense of calm and being in control while I seem to be riding a run away train at school.

I also have this idea that while Jack has never once criticized my house keeping abilities, he might not feel welcomed at coming home to a wreck.  I feel like after a week away, living in a camper trailer, being out in the cold and wind much of the day, home should be a haven.  As it is, he is coming home to a big chore list.  Cats to be hauled away to get their bits snipped, mailboxes to fix, tires for the car . . .

I don't melt down when he leaves, but there is a little wrenching in my heart.  I worry.  A lot.  Oil fields are dangerous places.  Big trucks are dangerous.  We do fine during the week, but there is always of sense of waiting for him to come home.  We FaceTime almost every night, Bell in my lap, telling him about her day.  But sometimes, it isn't the conversation, it is the hand in mine that I crave. Tonight, I can have that.

Contemplating Love and the R

I have been quiet here for a few weeks.  What can I say, but that I lead a boring life?  School with its endless 2nd grade spelling tests and high school essays has consumed us once again.   When I am checking math facts or doing all the crazy things we do for spelling, I have been worrying a few bones of my own.

I really feel that Bell needs a different speech therapist at school, but my attempts at getting her switched have hit a wall.  Apparently the other therapist only sees older students.  Never mind that the current therapist isn't helping.  There is a center in Lawton that does free therapy and I have called  at least twice a week for the past two weeks.  I leave messages.  No one calls back.  I suppose that means the door is shut.  There are other clinics, but they cost a fortune.  When Bell was little, we spent almost a thousand a month on therapy for the first while.  I imagine we wouldn't go as often now, but it would still be a hundred a week.  I don't know where that money would come from.  In the mean time, I wonder if I could deal with this at home if I just knew a little more about how to help her.  We do some practice at home, but I am limited in knowing technique.  Not pursuing this doesn't feel like an option.  People don't get to be president if they can't say their R's.  Bell doesn't yet know what she wants (she says the first job will be to build a machine to dig to the center of the earth to confirm what the core consists of, but then she will think about going to space), but I don't want language to be a barrier for whatever she pursues.   Next year, Bell will be old enough to see the other therapist, but will be it be in time?

Besides the dreaded R, I have spent a lot of time thinking about love and marriage.  Two weeks ago, I found out that an old friend was getting a divorce and then last week, I found out that someone near and dear was also divorcing, leaving some wreckage that will have a pretty serious impact on my family.    On the other end of the spectrum, Cindy has found someone to share her life with, someone she has committed to.  This love she has found makes my heart sing.

  I am reminded how wonderful and exciting love is, but how fragile it becomes if we don't nurture it.  At my brother's wedding in  the fall, Reggie, the preacher, talked about how if a marriage was going to work, people had to choose to walk in love every day.  If they weren't actively and consciously putting on love and fruits of the spirit, they would begin walking in selfishness, pursuing their own desires, choosing impatience . . . And eventually the couple would say "we just aren't in love any more."   Jack and I don't have the perfect marriage, and there were times early on when I thought I had probably ruined his life by marrying him.  However, we continue to practice walking in love, in putting each other and the idea of us above selfish desires.  We get better at this every year, and as we get better at it, it turns out that putting the needs of each other first is self serving.  If I am seeking what is best for him and he is seeking what is best for me, then we are making sure that each other's needs are met. There is no need to be selfish.   An old friend once told me that divorce is inevitable for all couples and that when things stopped being fun, you just move on.  I think that might have been the point when our friendship started to fizzle.  I just can't  be that casual about what I see as commitment.    I have spent a lot of time looking around me the past two weeks - I see a lot of joyful marriages and I see rubble where marriages that once were joyful have been cast aside.  I am so very happy for Cindy, but I am also sober, sad for the endings I also see.

Thursday, of my female students told one of the boys that he was a fool for not dating lots of girls and shopping around.  She suggested that he wouldn't know whether or not a better girl was out there unless he did.  He didn't say much, angered a little.  I rarely jump into my kids' conversations, but I did that day.  I said  the idea that someone else better was always out there contributed to people's dissatisfaction  with their spouses later on,  that this dating and dumping frenzy, rather than waiting and really getting to know someone and then committing if it was right,  was practice for divorce later on. The girl scoffed and said no one ever married their first love and stayed with them and were stupid if they did, staying only out of ignorance. I asked if she was calling my family stupid.  That ended the conversation.

The Case of the Missing Eyebrow

When Bella was 3 she went through a self haircut phase.  She found scissors I didn't even know we had, hid behind the recliner, and worked in her pony tails.  It was never so bad that we had to visit a salon and the phase was pretty short-lived, but it was one of Bell's many "DIY" projects.  There was the lotion phase that involved her sneaking in the bathroom and opening a box of 12 different Bath and Body scented lotions and applying them all to the point of being slick.  It takes multiple baths to get a kid non-greasy after such an event, the tub has to be scrubbed afterwards, and your kid still smells odd.

Yesterday, I discovered a new oddity.  I was helping Bell rinse her hair after she washed  it and noticed that one eyebrow looked odd.  I though it was just mussed up from when I dumped water over her head.  In fact, half her right eyebrow is mostly gone.  There is a thin line at the bottom and a few stray hairs at the top and one half is there, but the most of the other half is just gone, leaving a strip of very white skin beneath.  I wasn't mad - just amused and curious.  I badgered her off and on all day - had she played in tape, with my razor, borrowed my tweezers?  She adamantly refused to tell, maintaining that she did nothing and had no idea how it happened.  Finally, I asked her if she would tell Jack.  She said, "Yeah, I will tell dad next time we go camping because we always tell secrets when we camp."  Ahah! I pointed out that she had just admitted to having done something, but she just grinned and walked off to get ready for bed.

  I slept terribly last night - my school dreams have returned and my old hip bursitis kept me up most of the night, but I am up and ready for the last Friday of freedom.  I plan to work on a project for my parents' birthday (or anniversary at the rate I am going).  I need to get those work out DVDs going. And maybe I will sweet talk Bella out if her secret.  I just hope her eyebrow grows back because she is funny looking right now.