Thursday

Jane, the School of Rock teacher who played with TMA a couple weeks ago, asked Baylee if she'd come to a group lesson that she was teaching, in order to talk to and play with the girls there. Baylee agreed, so a couple evenings ago she showed up at this thing. She said that it was set up like an informal jam session with her on drums and the girls on their instruments. As soon as they all started playing, though, Baylee could tell things weren't flowing quite right. They were stilted. (Mind you, these are girls that sort of know Baylee from her SoR days, but they're a couple years younger than her.) Baylee told them something to the effect of, "Hey, guys, relax and don't feel any pressure. Playing music is supposed to be fun! Let's just enjoy this!" After that things loosened up. She also answered some questions they had about what it's like to be out of the SoR and in a band. Anyway, she said it went well, and that she might like to do it again sometime.

I've always known that I'm a list maker and box checker at heart. It's the reason why I like having the training plan for the 100km. That is, it lays out specific goals to shoot for, and I can check them off as I go. I was thinking about that, and I realized it might be helpful to do the same thing with my diet. I decided that I'm not in a huge hurry, but I want to get to my goal weight by the end of 2018, so I took the pounds I have to lose and divided them by the number of weeks that are left in this year. That told me how much I have to lose each week, and come to find out it's a nice, doable number that leaves room for life to happen now and then. Yay! Then I wrote it all out as a list of weekly checkpoints. It's motivating, because it's so tangible.

Speaking of life happening every now and then, tonight I'm going out for Thai with my friends Beth and Bethany. We're trying to get in time together before Beth (and her family) move to Texas next month.

Wednesday, Part 2

I forgot to mention that I went on my 2nd bike ride of the week this morning, and this time it wasn't quite as fun. It was cold (my poor hands! Mental note: wear gloves.) and dreary out, and at one point my chain fell off when I shifted. I'm not sure if it's an issue with the bike or me, but I'm leaning toward me. Anyway, I pulled off the trail to fix it, but the chain was jammed in such a way that I couldn't get it. Just as I was pulling out my phone to call Mike to rescue me, a good Samaritan on a bike stopped and asked if I needed help. I told him what was wrong, and he fixed it. He had some trouble with it, too, so that made me feel a little less inept.

By the way, Zach found out that I've got this 100km goal, and ever since then he's been acting like my coach. It's sort of endearing, but it's mostly annoying. lol I have to admit he does know what he's talking about in a lot of ways, because he used to work at R&E Cycles.

Wednesday

Here's another conversation from last night. This one might be TMI. Fair warning.


Me:  I found out today that when you're in menopause, even if you stop having your period for months, it could start back up again at any time. It can be like that for years before you're finally done.

Mike:  Well, it's called "menopause" for a reason, I guess.

Me:  What do you mean?

Mike:  You know, it has the word "pause" in it, because it's a pause.

Me:  What? Nuh uh. That's not why it has "pause" in it.

Mike:  Yeah, it is.

Me:  Really? Well, what does the "meno" part mean then?

Mike:  Menstrual.

Me:  Ohhhh. Haha! I never put that together. Wow, I'm dumb about menopause. I'm like that movie Carrie, when the girl gets her period for the first time at school, and she has no idea what's going on.


PS: To give myself credit, I do understand the logistics of menopause. I had just never given any thought to the word itself.

Tuesday

Tonight Baylee was trying to follow a recipe and cook something, and this conversation took place:

Her:  What's a skillet?

Me:  It's a frying pan.

Her:  Oh, okay! Where would I find one of those?

Sigh. I'd like to pretend this is a one-off, but there was that time (not too long ago) when she asked if baking soda came in liquid form.

I've pretty much failed her, culinary-wise.

Monday

Happy Memorial Day!

Yesterday I said that this bike training thing was going to take 14 weeks, but actually it's only going to take 10. Oops. I got mixed up, because I have a second little plan in the works (kinda more of a pipe dream at this point), which would happen immediately after I did the 100km and would add about 4 or 5 more weeks of training. Anyway, I'll talk about that later, if it ever comes to anything.

I did my very first ride of the 100km training plan today! I'm proud of myself, because I haven't ridden my bike in so long that it was a little daunting. And to be honest it wasn't that easy right at first. I felt dumb and clumsy trying to get used to being clipped into the pedals again and trying to work the gears. Plus I drove to the trail in my car with my bike in the back, and I happened to park right next to a giant pricker bush. In fact, I was parked so close to it that I had to basically bushwhack my way out the car door and along to the back, so I could get my bike out, and I got scratched up on my arms and legs.  LOL  I'm special.

I finally started riding, and as I said it was weird at first, but then it got fun, and the weather today was perfect for it. I was supposed to do 5 miles but went 6.15, because I wanted to get to this lake.

Afterward I took a selfie featuring my sweaty helmet hair. *grin*

In other news, here's a picture from today of Baylee cuddling Cooper.

 

PS: When I was leaving the house to go on that ride, my mind was filled with everything I'd need to take with me: driver's license, keys, helmet, and water bottle. It wasn't until I actually got out the door and was almost to the car that I realized and said aloud, "Oh, I almost forgot my bike!" Doh. So, yeah, I was pretty much a hot mess all the way around right at first.

Sunday

I got my bike back, so tomorrow starts my first week of the couch to 100km (it's not really called that, but that's what it is in my case) training. I'm excited!

Mike is home tomorrow because of the holiday, so he's going to go out with me for a bit in order to teach me how not to "cross the gears." Wait...cross the gears? Now I'm not even sure I'm saying that right.  Apparently, though, some of what needed to be fixed on my bike when he took it to the shop was because of this thing that I'm doing wrong, which has something to do with crossing.  (I googled. It's cross-chaining!)

Also, I fell off the wagon a bit with dieting, but I did it on purpose, because I thought it would be interesting to start the bike training and the dieting at the same time. It'll make it more exciting to track progress from week 1 to week 14. I even took week 1 pictures today. I'm not showing them here now (or ever, most likely), but I will keep you updated every Monday on how I'm doing on both fronts.

Saturday

The company sent me an email today, telling me that a customer reached out to let them know they're really happy with my work. That was nice to hear!

I read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy when I was a newlywed, so I decided recently that it's about time I read it again. After all, it's been more than twenty years. The problem has been that by the time I get around to reading the book, which is at night in bed, I'm too tired to make it more than a few pages. Today I solved that by getting the audio version, and I'm excited to listen to it while I clean the house over the next couple weeks or so.

PS: Although I haven't read the books more than once, I have watched the movies (both The Hobbit movies and the Lord of the Rings movies) a few times over the years. Of course, the books are better than the movies in every way, with one exception: This song sung by the dwarves in the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. It's hauntingly beautiful.

Wednesday

"I've got bad news about the muffins, guys."  ~ me, last night

LOL Can you believe that? That was a doozy, even for me. I was completely ready to take the blame for it, though, as I often mess up recipes, but it turns out the oven was broken. Mike looked at it this morning and realized that when the "bake" button was pressed, the broiler was also coming on. He messed around with it for about an hour and fixed it.

Okay, what I'm about to say is probably going to be offensive:

I think the whole essential oil thing is ridiculous. I've got a handful of friends on FB who are selling the stuff, and according to them just about everything can be cured with the right combination of oils. A couple days ago one of my friends posted that she was having trouble sleeping, so she used cedarwood oil, "one drop on each big toe to aid sleep!" Tsk. Take a Benadryl. It'll do the same thing and keep your sheets cleaner. You know what it reminds me of? It's like one of those old-time traveling medicine shows that would roll into town selling "miracle elixirs" out of the back of a wagon. Eventually folks would realize the so-called medicine didn't work, and then they would run the operation out on a rail.

Tuesday

One of the great things about my job is that I can do it when and where I want, but that's also one of its challenges.  It can be hard to make myself actually sit down and work when there's no clock to punch or boss to answer to. Recently, though, I figured out a good (and probably obvious) solution. I decided exactly how much money I want to make each week, then I divided that further down by day. Now I know that each day I have to work until I hit a certain dollar amount, and for some reason that makes it all easier and more doable for me.

Baylee gets high school credit for the music things that she does, but I need to document it. That was pretty easy with the SOR, because they always had a program for every show, but now it’s a little bit harder. Here’s how I handled it. (Those are all the online advertisements for the TMA gigs she’s been a part of...14 of them this school year!)

After I made those I realized I forgot a show, so I made a 4th page with this ad on it.

And here's a picture of the cat in the sunshine.

One of the things we have all over the place around here are people who do "parking enforcement" as a job. They drive around and put tickets on cars that aren't parked correctly. I saw one of them going down the road today, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with Mike about it once...

Me: Hey, are those parking enforcement people actual policemen or can anybody get that job?

Mike: I think they're regular people who get deputized, but I'm not sure.

Me: Do they get guns?

Mike: I doubt it.

Me:  I think I might like doing that for a living.

Mike: What? Absolutely not! Nobody in this family is going to be a revenue agent!

*snicker*

PS: I just looked it up, and it seems like the job is open to the public. Here's a bit of info I found on it...

Yes, please! I'm sold! (Just kidding...mostly. Wanting to ride a segway isn't a good reason to apply, right?)

Monday

When I was in Junior high there was a very poor girl named Dot in my gym class. She smelled bad, she wore dirty, old clothes, and she wasn't all there mentally. One day during lunch she was sitting near me, so I struck up a conversation with her. I asked her if she had any brothers or sisters, and she told me she had two brothers named Robert and Bobby.  I said, "But those are the same name." She didn't get it. (And neither did her mom, I'm guessing, since she's the one who must've named them.)

One day I noticed that Dot had clean, nice gym clothes, and I mentioned it to my mom when I got home. My mom figured out that my gym teacher, Mrs. Smith, was probably helping Dot, and she told me how wonderful that was and what a ministry it was.  At the next parent-teacher conference my mom asked Mrs. Smith about it, and it turned out she was right. Mrs. Smith was helping Dot. My mom thanked her for her kindness.

The weird thing was that Mrs. Smith was sort of an Agatha Trunchbull of a woman.

She was big and overbearing, she had black hair that she scraped back into a bun, and we were all scared of her. It's nice to think that underneath she was a compassionate person.

Sunday

Today I was picking Baylee up from somewhere near Tacoma, and on our way home Google Maps rerouted us so that we'd go around some construction on the highway. In the course of that, we drove right next to Boeing Field and saw all the airplanes. It was neat. The reason I mention it, though, is that Baylee spontaneously did an impression of the type of conversation she might have with her dad about it, and it made me laugh.  Pretending to be Mike, she pointed at one of the big planes and said, "You see that one? That's a SPF-45 2000.  It's got 26-foot wings and stainless steel wheels. It's a fighter plane!"

Then she had herself respond with, "Oh, that's cool, Dad."

"Innit?!" she had her dad answer back.

LOL! I have to say, she nailed it. Mike is a huge airplane geek now that he works at Boeing, and he's always telling us stuff like that.

And here's a picture of the California poppies in our front yard right now. Aren't they pretty?

Friday

Zach yesterday.

Cooper yesterday.

My bike today. Mike insisted I wash the dust off of it before he takes it to the bike shop tomorrow, because "that's embarrassing." lol

Yesterday the marching band of the high school across the street practiced right outside our house, and they sounded great! Drew and I agreed it's the best they've sounded in years.

On a totally different note, guess what happened to me. I was driving the car, and I was in a roundabout. Then some person came barreling up, expecting to blow through it, except I was already in it, so he had to slow down. He honked at me!! And it wasn't one of those somewhat nice honks, either; it was an obnoxious, long, loud honk. And he was the one in the wrong! WA drivers are the worst. 

Summer Goals

This is going to be the summer of Getting My Stuff Together. (If I wasn't a conservative Christian mom I'd definitely say the other S word, because it would sound so much more dramatic.) That is, I'm going to work hard to get to my goal weight and I'm going to ride my bike a ton.

As far as the weight loss, I already started that on Friday, so tomorrow will be one week. I'm counting calories, which isn't unusual, but I'm doing one thing different for me: I'm having my main meal at lunch, and for dinner I'm having a Premier Protein shake. It's working well so far, because each of those shakes has 30 grams of protein, and that keeps me satisfied all evening. Anyway, I'll update you every now and then with my progress.

I'm really excited about the biking. This weekend Mike is going to take my bike to the shop to get a tune-up, and then when I get it back (which may take a couple weeks) I'm going to start to ride. I even have a goal: I want to ride a metric century, and I'm going to use this training plan to do it. Even though it's not a real century (100 miles), it'll still be the farthest I've ever gone.

Oh, and Baylee finished 11th grade today!

Wednesday

Drew signed up to take an environmental science class this quarter, but after attending one time he decided to drop it. Meanwhile, he never did the paperwork to get out of the class, so technically he's still in it. Tomorrow is the last day to drop it without penalty, so this morning we had this conversation:

Me:  If you don't remember to drop that class, it's going to be just like a recurring nightmare I've had for the last 25 years or so. Every once in awhile I dream that I'm in college, and I sign up for a class, but then I forget about it and just never go. Then on the last day, the day of the final, it suddenly occurs to me, "Oh my gosh, I'm in that class!"

Drew: [laughs] You've been having this dream for twenty-five years? Really?

Me:  What? I didn't say I have it every night.

Yesterday Baylee sent me these two little videos while she was on her lunch break at work.  They're about how the other employees got her food order wrong. She makes me laugh.

PS: She's doing great there. She's one of the fastest people they have on drive-through now.

PPS:  She has allergies.

Tuesday

In the past week two different people have asked me about my transcription/captioning job, and since I first got it probably ten have asked altogether. They're always either interested for themselves or for someone they know who they think would be good at it, and I'm always happy to talk. I think it's great work.

A couple days ago I was thinking about growing up with my brother, Eric. He's three years younger than me, which means we were close enough in age to play together constantly, but far enough that I was usually better at everything. For many years I was stronger, faster, and smarter, which led to frequent arguments and a few thrown (by him) Monopoly boards. lol

Anyway,  in thinking about this, I had a memory of a time when I was probably about 12 and he was 9, and we were playing outside. We had gotten into an argument, and I called him an ass, which was not allowed. My mom didn't even let us say "dang." Of course, being a little brother Eric immediately threatened to tell on me, and I begged him not to. I thought I had him convinced to let it go, too, because we started playing again and all seemed well. A little while later, though, we went inside and Eric spilled the beans. I still remember what my mom said. She told me, "If you're using language like that, you must be tired," and she sent me to bed to take a nap. I didn't think I was tired at all, but weirdly I fell immediately asleep and slept for three hours. When I got up all was forgiven.

Monday

When I was looking for a good picture to post on FB for Mother's Day, I ran across this one. I know I showed it to you guys several years ago, but I thought I'd put it up again, since I've been talking about my college roommate, Darcy. This is a picture of my half of our dorm room that year. Here's the thing, though: Darcy was actually the messy one. I became messy, because it was easier to join her than to try to clean all the time.

Thoughts:

• You see that gray suitcase thingie on the floor? That was my typewriter. Weird to think of actually using one of those now. Remember White Out?
• I can't help but notice that I have some pretty cute red Chucks there on the bed.
• The can of Mello Yello (Do they even make that anymore?) on my desk reminds me of a story. Possibly I've told it here before, but I'll tell it again, because it's short. One time during that same year with Darcy, I woke up in the night really thirsty. I knew I had a fairly fresh can of Mello Yello somewhere by my bed, so I reached out, grabbed it, and took a big swig. It was a can Mello Yello, but it wasn't the one that I had been drinking a few hours earlier. No, it was an old, old, OLD one. It was so old, in fact, that it had slimy mold in it that went right down my throat. It was as horrifying as it sounds. When I looked at the can the next morning some of the mold was still hanging out of the top of it. It was white and mucus-like.

The kids got me nice little gifts for Mother's Day yesterday...chocolate and things like that...and Mike got me the coolest card! I took a video of it, because it's kind of a work of art.

I have a video of one of the songs I really liked from the show the other night. The girls were so energetic and sounded so good, and they totally got the audience up on their feet and dancing. That said, I feel like I need to give you fair warning before you click on it: You can see Bri's bra the entire time. It's as much as you'd see of someone wearing a bikini top on the beach...less actually, because she's still got a shirt on over it...but there you go. The song is called "Dress Code," and it's about how women are held to a different standard than men when it comes to what's considered appropriate dress. I'm pretty sure Bri was trying to make a statement. PS: This is the song with Baylee's drum solo. That happens at 1:45, then Jane takes one on the guitar at 2:00, and Stephanie takes one on the bass at about 2:35.  PPS: Besides drumming, Baylee does all the backup vocals on this song.

Quite a Few Pictures and a Little Video

Last night Mike, Patty, and I went to see TMA, because they were able to get a different venue when the last one was messed up. It turned out to be a great show, and it was so fun to see Jane, one of Baylee's directors from when she was at the SoR, perform with them.  They all killed it!

While we were waiting for the show to start, Mike, Patty, and I went out for fish and chips. The weather was beautiful, so we ate on the restaurant's patio and had a nice view of Mount Rainier.

  

By the way, do you see that man and woman in the first picture? She was all over him the whole time they were there...rubbing his bald head, kissing him, putting her hand on his arm, and fawning over everything he said. It made me think that they're probably not married, or she wouldn't be trying so hard.

This was the ad for the event before the venue changed.

Here's a picture of Jane (far left) with the band.

And here's a little video of a solo that Baylee took on the drums.

Happy Mother's Day! (my mom and I on the day I graduated from college)

The cat looked so comfortable sleeping on Baylee's lap today that I couldn't resist snapping a couple pictures.

One of the prettiest things in WA around this time of year:  the rhododendrons

Friday

Tonight I overheard Drew and Alex (our house guest) talking in the kitchen...

Drew:  You know, you can make ramen soup in the microwave.
Alex:   No, come on. That doesn't exist.
Drew:  Yeah, it does.  Didn't you get your GED at Shoreline, same as me? That's the biggest thing I learned there!

(The GED students were given snacks like granola bars and ramen, and there was a microwave for them to use, too.)

Oh, guess what! Remember how I said that Drew is going through a program in which he can earn his AA degree and an actual high school diploma at the same time? Well, after this quarter he will have officially earned his high school diploma. That will make the GED irrelevant. He still has a few classes to take before he'll have an AA in Music, though.

You know how adults sometimes like to color in coloring books for relaxation? I've tried that, and it's okay for a little while under certain circumstances...like when I'm at a cabin in the woods with my friends and there's literally nothing else to do...but recently I found something a lot better: sentence diagramming! I bought a big book of sentence diagramming, and when I have a spare moment here and there I pull it out and do it.  There's only one problem with it: All the sentences in it are scripture from the King James Bible. Like, literally, every single sentence.

Let me give you an example of why that's annoying/kind of hilarious.  There's a certain type of sentence called an imperative sentence. It's what people use when they're giving orders.  They might say, "Go get me the remote," or, "Lock the door," or, "Eat your peas." All of those are imperative sentences, and, if you notice, none of them have subjects. That's because the subject in imperative sentences is understood; it's "you." You go get me the remote. You lock the door. You eat your peas. When you're diagramming them you just put the word "you" in parentheses in the subject spot.  That is, unless you're using the King James Bible. Then, apparently, you do this...

By the way, the author's picture is in the back of the book. Doesn't she look exactly like the kind of person who would write a book about sentence diagramming using only the King James Bible?

Pictures from Lately

Just look at this cute, crotchety old guy.

A couple days ago we could see a rainbow from our front door.

This made me laugh.

This is what it looks like when your husband's actually busy at work and isn't responding to any of your scintillating conversation.  lol  To be honest, this is probably a good representation of us in general. I'm more talkative and he's quieter. I remember when we were dating I would sometimes say, "Am I talking too much?" and he'd always respond, "No, I like hearing you."

The rest of the pictures are from today. Here's Baylee taking a standardized test this morning. When she finishes the whole thing...this week or a bit into next week...she'll be officially done with 11th grade.

Later on she asked Mike to explain her paystub to her. At one point I heard her say, "You mean to tell me that I actually made [such and such amount], but the government stole part of it?!"

And for lunch she made herself this sandwich. She makes vegetarianism look delicious.

Monday

Thinking about my roommate who was a junior...her name was Darcy, btw...made me remember something else:

Because Darcy was a couple years above me, we didn't have any classes together. We were also busy with our own separate lives for much of the time. (She was engaged to be married, so she especially had a lot going on.) Every so often, though, one of us would say, "Hey, do you want to go to bed early tonight?" If the other was free and agreed, then we'd each make sure to be in our dorm room by 7 or 8pm. We'd get into our beds for the night, and then we'd talk for hours about anything and everything. It was our way of maintaining our friendship. It still makes me smile to think of it.

Speaking of going to bed, I'm so tired. I fell asleep sometime after 2:30 and had to get up at 6:30. Ugghhhh. This is gonna be a long day.

---------------- (I wrote the above earlier, and I was right: It's been a long day.)

I feel sorry for TMA. They had a show booked at Louie G's (my new favorite venue, because of its awesome stage and its pizza) this weekend, along with three other bands, but somehow there was a mix-up and now they can't play there. I don't know if Louie G's accidentally double booked their space or if the headlining band (not TMA) messed up. Whatever went wrong, the whole thing is cancelled unless they can find another venue at this late date. Normally that would only be annoying, but it's especially bad this time, because TMA hired a guitarist to play with them, since Jonny can't make the gig. They still have to pay the guitarist, so they're going to lose that money.

By the way, Baylee is the one who found the guitarist for them. Her name is Jane, and she's a teacher at the Seattle SoR. Baylee asked her if she'd play with them, all the time thinking Jane would probably say no, and she said yes! She practiced with them and sounded amazing, and it would've been great. What a bummer.

Sunday

Last night was one of those nights where I was thinking to myself, wait, what is going on?? Basically, one thing led to another, and at 9pm we had Baylee's band sitting around our dining room table eating marionberry pie while talking and laughing, and in the next room Drew and his friend Brady loudly playing jazz tunes on the piano and guitar. Honestly, I'm a quiet person who just wants to read a book, so when stuff like this happens it's like I meant to get on a bus to Gary, Indiana, but somehow accidentally got on a plane to New Delhi instead. It's not a bad place; it's just a surprise.

TMA was actually here to pick up some equipment, so after they ate pie and visited, they gathered up their stuff. Then this conversation happened...

Stephanie:  Whose little amp is that?
Bri:  Mine.
Jonny:  Wow, you have a tiny amp.
Bri:  Your mother has a tiny amp.
Jonny:  It's not something she can help.

Different topic: Today a memory came to me...

When I was a freshman in college I roomed with a junior. The school didn't normally put freshmen with juniors, but we were already friends from going to summer camp together, so we requested to be roommates. Anyway, because she was older than me she had older friends, and one of her older friends was a married student who sold Mary Kay.

To get to the point: One night my roommate and I found ourselves at a Mary Kay party being put on by this woman. She started in on her spiel about how great Mary Kay is and how it'll give you perfectly clear skin, but here's the thing: Her skin was super pimply and rashy. Finally she finished her little talk and asked if any of us had any questions. Somebody raised their hand.  "Yes?" the consultant said.

"Umm...do you use the product?"

You could just see the consultant bristle. "Yes, I do," she said coldly, "but I just started. Your skin gets worse before it gets better, because all the impurities are being drawn out."

I don't think she did a lot of sales that night. For one thing pretty much everyone there was a broke college student, but for another I'm not sure anyone bought her "always darkest just before dawn" explanation. And even if it was true, who would want to go through that??

Saturday

A couple months ago Drew got a text, kind of out of the blue, from a friend that he made back when he was in the GED program. The girl said that she was in a horrible living situation (disgusting, probably condemnable house with a roommate who really scared her), and she wondered if she could sleep on our couch just for the night. Drew asked us if it would be okay, we said yes, and that's how we met Alex. She's very a nice, polite, shy kid of 18 or 19. She has her GED now and a job, and she's trying to make something of herself.

Over the next few weeks we ended up letting Alex crash on our futon on three or four more occasions, getting to know her a little bit more each time, until yesterday. That's when she reached out to Drew and said that her roommate kicked her out, and she had nowhere to go. (She won't go home to her family. She has her reasons, and I think they're valid.) She told him she bought a tent, and she was going to try to live in that. Drew's heart went out to her, and he came to me, saying, "Mom, I know I'm putting you in a really tough spot, but here's the situation..." Long story short, we're letting Alex sleep here until she has her life in order. She's embarrassed about having to accept the help, but mostly she's desperate and just thankful for somewhere to go.

I'm going to be honest: I have mixed feelings. Part of me knows that we can give her a place to sleep and somewhere to store her few belongings. She's not even here during the day, because she works, and she's going through a program at the community college in order to get an AA, so it's a fairly easy sacrifice for us to make. At the same time, I wonder how long it will last. It's open-ended, and that makes me nervous.

I called my mom yesterday and talked to her about it, because I was so unsure. In the course of our conversation she mentioned how my grandpa, her dad, was always taking in strays. She said that one time during her childhood they had a man stay in a little out-building on their property for a year. He was a recovering alcoholic and needed a leg up, so my grandpa gave him one. In exchange, he was my grandpa's right-hand man on the farm. There was something about that story, and also my own memories of the people my grandpa always seemed to have around...people he was helping...that made me relax into the decision. It made it seem doable.

PS: One of the things that's been heartwarming to see during all this is Drew's...I'm not sure what to call it...I almost want to say "nurturing side." For instance, when Alex comes over he always makes her food. The last time she was here he made her corn dogs, and she sat eating them while Drew played for her on the piano. lol

On a totally different note, I love this picture of TMA that was taken at a recent gig! You can see B in the background. (photo credit: Ian Speckmeier)

Thursday

Today has been one of those productive days where lots of little things are getting done: house cleaned, car filled up with gas, Baylee registered for summer camp, mail brought to post office, a little French studied, and homemade pea soup on the stove. Oh! And I ordered a big book of sentence diagramming for myself, just for fun.

You know how parents of adult children sometimes find out, years later, about things their kids did? Things they had no idea of at the time? Well, yesterday Mike and I found out something that Drew did when he was in high school. To be honest, we had to laugh about it. Here's the story:

One time when Drew was at the SoR he was given the opportunity to play onstage with the drummer from a well-known band called Clutch. This drummer, named Jean-Paul, and the kids who were chosen played a Clutch song together called "Burning Beard." Anyway...and this is the part I had no idea about...right before Drew went onstage he was pulled aside by one of the SoR moms. This woman was known for being the worst stage mom you can imagine. She would go to every rehearsal that her daughter was in (and those rehearsals were 3 hours long) and just sit there and "make suggestions" to the director. This was unheard of! No other parent ever did that. She would also try to parent other people's kids, and not in a good way. She would put kids down and make them feel terrible. Eventually her family was asked to leave the Seattle SoR, and it was all because of her behavior. To get back to my story, though, right before Drew played with the Clutch drummer, that woman pulled him aside and said, "You had better not improvise up there. Don't you dare."

Here's the thing about Drew: Of all my kids, he's the least likely to be intimidated by something like that. That's not the way to get him to do (or not do) anything. In fact, that's a good way to guarantee that he's going to do the opposite of what you want. Sure enough, he got up there and improvised his guitar solo, and it actually sounded great! Afterward Jean-Paul told him, "Good leading, brother." Stage Mom didn't say a word.

I have video of the event. The first one is the real "Burning Beard" done by Clutch. The guitar solo, the way it's supposed to be played, comes at 1:44.

And here's the SoR with Jean-Paul version. Drew's improvisation also comes at 1:44.

Little French Lesson

Did I ever tell you guys that you already know more than 1,200 words in French? That's because just about every single "tion" word in the English language comes directly from French. In fact, it's usually spelled and pronounced pretty much the same.  Here are some examples:

preparation (English) -- préparation (French).  The only real difference is that when you say it in French, you have to sound a little more Frenchy. You say /prep uh rah see oh/.

invitation (English) -- invitation (French), but in French it's pronounced /uh vee tah see oh/.

position (English) -- position (French), but pronounced like /po sih see oh/.

Also, while I'm on the topic, you basically know any words that end in "ary" in English, like "military," "dictionary," and "anniversary." The only thing you have to remember is to change the "ary" to "aire."

military (English) -- militaire (French), pronounced /mil ee tair/

dictionary (English) -- dictionnaire (French), pronounced /dic see oh nair/

anniversary (English) -- anniversaire (French), pronounced /ann ee vers air/

Okay, fine, I'll tell you one more thing that you're thiiiiiis close to already knowing: Any words that end in "ical" in English are almost the same in French, but they end in "ique."

political (English) -- politique (French), pronounced /poh lih teek/

economical (English) -- économique (French), pronounced /ay con oh meek/

astronomical (English) -- astronomique (French), pronounced /as tron oh meek/

Tuesday

I can't remember how it started, but several months ago Drew and I started doing something dumb, but amusing. Whenever one of us says something the least bit interesting, the other one gives one of those whistles that means, "Wow!" Our game is to find ridiculous reasons to give the longest "Wow!" whistle we possibly can without laughing and ruining it.

It's been fun, but now my problem is that I find myself doing it by accident with people who aren't Drew. The other day my friend Bethany said something mildly entertaining, and I gave a long whistle of appreciation. I didn't explain myself afterward, either, because that would've probably made it even weirder.

Sigh.